LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 



UNTO THE UTTERMOST 



BY 

JAMES M. CAMPBELL 



*' With the Lord there is mercy, and with him there is plenteous 
redemption^ 

— Psalm cxxx. 7. 






8 !R89rt,r 



NEW YORK: 
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT 






THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



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6** 



Copyright, in 1889, 

By James M. Campbell. 



PREFACE. 



Of the things contained in the following 
pages, this is the sum : — that the rainbow of 
divine propitiousness overarches -every life; that 
this redeemed earth is to all who dwell upon it 
the footstool of mercy ; that plenitude of redeem- 
ing power has, by the hand of the Crucified, been 
lodged in the world's heart ; that divine grace is 
mightier than human sin ; that beneath the vilest 
sinner the ever-present Christ puts the saving 
strength of his atoning love to lift him up into 
the sunlight of pardon and purity; that the line 
of limitation in human redemption is drawn by 
man himself, not by God ; that all sin involves 
eternal loss, all righteousness eternal gain ; that 
the freedom of man as a moral being, and his 
consequent responsibility to God, continue for 
ever under conditions which render response to 
every moral requirement eternally possible ; that 



4 PREFACE. 

whatever the unknown future may hold in store 
for any, the present life — because of the insepa- 
rable connection of Christ with it — is, in every 
part and particle, sufficient unto salvation for 
all. 

Watertown, Wis. 

September, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Unto the Uttermost, 7 

II. A Castaway Reclaimed, .... 17 

III. Grace Conquering Nature, . . . .27 

IV. A Pessimistic View of the Moral Condition 

of Man, 39 

V. The Limits of Evolution, . . . . 49 

VI. Moral Miracles, 65 

VII. The Higher Environment, . . . -79 
VIII. The Universality of the Divine Purpose of 

Redemption, 91 

IX. The Forthputting of Redemptive Effort 

a Necessity of the Divine Nature, . . 103 

X. The Sin that Shuts the Door of Mercy, 117 

XL The Chief Danger-Point, . . . .143 

XII. The Fluidity of Character, ... 163 

XIII. Judicial Blindness, . . . . . .181 

XIV. A Common Spiritual Disease, ... 191 
XV. Past Feeling, 203 

XVI. Bartering the Birthright, . . .215 

XVII. Death a Loss, 227 

XVIII. The Finality of the Present, . . . 239 



I. 

UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 



" He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto 
God through him." — Heb. vii. 25. 

" The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all 
sin." — \ John, i. 7. 

" Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord ; though 
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though 
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." — Isa. i. 18. 



UNTO THE UTTERMOST 



UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

Filtering through the religious teaching of 
to-day there is a spirit of moral pessimism that 
gendereth to despair. The appalling doctrine 
gains currency, that man may glide impercepti- 
bly downward in the path of sin to a point from 
which there is no possibility of return to the 
light and freedom of a holy life. Largely as the 
result of the influence of the scientific spirit of 
the times upon religious thought, it has come to 
be taken for granted that in virtue of the inevi- 
table tendency of moral force to persist in the 
course upon which it has started, the evil doer 
may sink into a condition in which he is inca- 
pable of redemption. It is averred that even in 
this life the erring feet of man may pass beyond 
the boundary line of hope, and his probation be 
practically ended. Over against this gospel of 
doom, to which false exegesis has given an 



JO UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

appearance of scriptural support, it is necessary 
to place in boldest relief the gospel of hope, 
which proclaims the good news of salvation to 
the lost. 

Christ is a perfect Saviour for a world of sinners. 
He is able to meet the heaviest spiritual demands 
that may be made upon him. Sufficiency of 
power abides in his cross to save the worst of 
men. His saving power reaches out to all who 
need deliverance from sin and condemnation, and 
reaches down to the depth of their utmost need. 
He is able to save all men, and he is able to save 
them entirely, completely. As far as the disease 
of sin has spread the saving power of his cross 
extends. Beyond his saving power no soul can 
sink. There is no case too desperate for him to 
undertake ; there is no case ever turned away, 
pronounced by him incurable. For the healing 
of the most diseased, for the uplifting of the 
most degraded the power of his atonement is 
abundantly, yea, superabundantly, adequate. He 
is mighty, yea, almighty, to save. " He is able 
to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God 
by him." 

With the talismanic word uttermost, which 
stretches beyond all human limitations of the 
divine mercy, the vilest sinner may repel every 
temptation to despair. Placing that word upon 
the homiletical anvil William Jay fashions out of it 



UNTO THE UTTERMOST. I I 

the six-linked chain of gospel truth that Christ is 
able " to save to the uttermost ends of the earth ; 
to the uttermost limits of time ; to the uttermost 
period of life ; to the uttermost depth of deprav- 
ity; to the uttermost depth of misery; and to 
the uttermost measure of perfection." Christ's 
uttermost of redemption outreaches man's utter- 
most of need. With an ample ransom provided, 
none need go down to the pit. With sufficiency 
of redeeming grace encompassing every life, hell 
is in no case a necessity, but is always and for- 
ever a choice. 

Popular preaching delights in exalting the 
saving power of Christ. Spurgeon, in a passing 
sermon, gives the following: "If you are so far 
gone that there seems to be not even a ghost of 
a shade of a shadow of a hope anywhere about 
you, yet if you believe in Jesus you shall live. 
Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, for he is worthy 
to be trusted. Throw yourself upon him and he 
will carry you in his bosom. Cast your whole 
weight upon his atonement, it will bear the 
strain." All this is true as it is forcible ; but 
it will not do for the preacher of the gospel with 
one breath to say that Christ can save to the 
uttermost, and with the next breath to affirm that 
man may reach a point in perversity in wicked- 
ness which places him below the line of help and 
hope. Consistency there is none in affirming 



12 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

that the strong arm of Christ can deliver those 
who have sunk the deepest in the mire of iniq- 
uity, and at the same time affirming that char- 
acter can become so fixed and stereotyped that 
even with the power of Christ taken into account 
change is impossible. If the one position be 
maintained the other must be surrendered. The 
two positions are logically irreconcilable. 

A father mourning over the guilt of his child 
is represented by Shakespeare as exclaiming : 

" Oh 1 she is fallen 
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea 
Hath drops too few to wash her clean again." 

With this hapless wail, which shame and 
wounded love have wrung from an agonized 
heart, contrast the tender words of mercy and 
hope in which the Heavenly Father addresses his 
sin-befouled and despairing children: "Come 
now, and let us reason together ; though your 
sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; 
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
wool." That there are sins which stain a man to 
the inmost core of his being must be conceded ; 
but that sin ever leaves an indelible stain, that it 
ever leaves a mark which the mercy of heaven 
cannot efface, no one who believes in the moral 
power of the gospel, and in the efficacy of the 
Redeemer's sacrifice, ought for a moment to 



UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 1 3 

admit. The resources of the saving power of 
Christ, for the race and for the individual, cannot 
be exhausted. The treasury of divine grace 
cannot be reduced to bankruptcy. Heaven's 
supplies are co-extensive with man's want ; 
heaven's remedy co-extensive with man's disease. 
Deeper than the deepest depths of man's guilt is 
God's mercy; deeper than the deepest depths of 
man's sin is the atoning power of the sacrifice of 
Christ. " So great, so high, and so extensive," 
exclaims the venerable John Arndt, " are the 
power and efficacy of the merit of the atonement 
that it would still prove a sufficient ransom if 
every man were guilty of the sins of the whole 
world. Nay, if there were as many worlds 
drowned in sin as there are men that live on this 
earth, yet would the merit of Christ and his 
righteousness be large enough to cover all their 
sins."* 

Universal in the world, the power of Christ is 
also universal in the individual. Depth and 
breadth, intensiveness and extensiveness are 
equal, and equally complete. The Kingdom of 
Christ ruleth over all, and it ruleth over the 
whole man ; controlling the spirit, and through 
the spirit controlling the soul and the body, thus 
bringing the entire man into subjection to the 

* True Christianity, Book II., Chapter II. 



14 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

divine will. There is no half-work with Christ. 
Were his atonement less than universal in the 
sweep of its purpose and power it would fail to 
meet all that is demanded, and would leave the 
redemption of our fallen race still unfinished ; 
and were discovery to be made of a single in- 
stance in which the gospel had proved powerless 
to save we should be compelled to regard the 
sacrifice of Christ as incomplete, the power of 
Christ as something less than divine, and the 
purpose of God in redemption as a melancholy 
failure. A perfect, adequate atonement must 
contain of redeeming power, " enough for each, 
enough for all, enough for evermore." 

If Christ be indeed a sufficient and efficient 
Saviour the low condition into which any man 
has fallen does not place him beyond the reach 
of deliverance. No man, and no race of men, can 
fall so low, that the lever of divine power cannot 
lift them up to a Godlike life. Within the gos- 
pel there is a moral dynamic force which consti- 
tutes it " the power of God unto salvation to 
every one that believeth." However frequently 
and flagrantly any man may have sinned, his 
case is not hopeless. The gulf of his guilt 
is spanned by the bridge of propitiation, and 
over that bridge he may pass to pardon and 
righteousness. In the iron wall of despair by 
which the sinning soul frequently finds himself 



UNTO THE UTTERMOST I 5 

ringed around, there is always, if he only knew 
it, a door of deliverance. To every soul bowed 
down with the burden of sin, thinking himself 
too guilty to be forgiven, limiting by his doubt 
and unbelief the mercy in which he would fain 
believe, Christ the Blessed One says, " Behold I 
have set before thee an open door, and no man 
can shut it." With this declaration of universal 
mercy uncancelled, and unrecalled, it is a daring 
thing, an unwarrantable thing to say of any one 
in the whole round world that the sun of his hope 
has set, that all possibilities of good have been 
lost out of his life forever, and that henceforward 
he must continue to drift onward in the darkness 
of despair, uncheered by any glad forelooking to 
the possible dawning of a better morrow. Place 
a single soul beyond the hope of salvation, and 
a limit is put upon the mercy of God, and the 
saving power of Christ ; in fine, the salvation of 
Christ is made something less than " Salvation 
unto the uttermost" 



II. 

A CASTAWAY RECLAIMED. 



" Thank God, no Paradise stands barred to entry." 

R. Browning. 

" Man cannot be God's outlaw, if he would." 

J. R. Lowell. 

" Wearily for me thou soughtest, 
On the cross my love thou boughtest, 
Lose not all for which thou wroughtest." 

Judgment Hymn. 

" O God ! how beautiful the thought, 
How merciful the blest decree, 
That grace can e'er be found when sought 
And naught shut out the soul from Thee." 

Eliza Cook. 

" My mercy doth outreach the universe ; 
Shall it not be sufficient for one soul ? " 

P. J. Bailey. 



II. 

A CASTAWAY RECLAIMED. 

THERE are in Scripture certain things hard to 
be understood, which have unwittingly been 
wrested to the destruction of human hope. The 
gospel message which has been sent " to pro- 
claim release unto the captive," has been changed 
into a message of doom ; the door of mercy 
which God has opened in his Word, the hand 
of false interpretation with unseemly haste has 
shut ; limits have been set up from beyond 
which the wanderer cannot return ; the soul to 
which Eternal Mercy clings has been too readily 
surrendered to the blackness of despair; the 
ambassador of Christ, ceasing to publish salva- 
tion, has, without heaven's sanction, begun to 
ring the death-knell of souls. 

An illustrative example of the manner in 
which the words of Scripture are frequently per- 
verted by reading into them narrow, preconceived 
ideas touching the scope of redemption, is 
afforded in the interpretation which is commonly 
given to the oft-quoted words in Hosea iv. ij. 



20 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

14 Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." 
These words have been taken as setting the seal 
of doom upon souls now living on this fair earth. 
They have been so explained as to send despair 
to many a heart. Take the following exposition 
by the gentle-hearted Matthew Henry, as a fair 
sample of what has been written upon this text : 
44 Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone. Let 
no man reprove him. Let him be given up to 
his own heart's lusts, and walk in his own coun- 
sels. It is a sad and sore judgment for any 
man to be let alone in sin ; for God to say con- 
cerning a sinner ; He is joined to his idols, the 
world, the devil and the flesh ; he is incurably 
proud, covetous, or profane ; an incurable drunk- 
ard, or adulterer; let him alone; conscience, let 
him alone ; minister, let him alone ; Providence, 
let him alone ; let nothing awaken him till the 
flames of hell do it." 

Such an interpretation, to say the least of it, 
presents a very forbidding aspect. To harmon- 
ize it with those other Scriptures which plainly 
teach the willingness of God to save the guiltiest 
sinner is a feat surpassing the highest dialectic 
skill. No common mind could identify as one, 
the God who spurns from him this offending 
child, saying, ' 4 Let him alone," and the God 
whose heart-yearnings over this very prodigal 
voice themselves in the tender words, " How 



A CASTA WA Y RECLAIMED. 2 1 

shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? how shall I 
deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as 
Admah ? how shall I set thee as Zeboim ? Mine 
heart is turned within me, my repentings are 
kindled together." * There is one presumptive 
mark of correctness which the interpretation 
referred to fails to reveal — harmony with the 
moral convictions of humanity as to what is 
right. That it is based upon an entire miscon- 
ception of the text, we proceed to show. 

The first question to be considered is, "To 
whom does God here speak?" A plain answer 
to this question not only produces a rift in the 
clouds, but clears away the whole cloud-bank of 
difficulty that has settled down upon the text. 
Evidently the prophet Hosea was not told to let 
Ephraim alone. If he received such instruction 
he was mindful to disregard it. Unceasingly did 
he beseech Ephraim to repent of his sins, and 
turn to God. There can be no doubt that the 
injunction, " Let him alone," was given to Judah. 
A study of the context makes this abundantly 
evident. 

The ten tribes had hived off under Jeroboam 
and formed themselves into a separate kingdom. 
The wily usurper Jeroboam, seeing that if he 
was to maintain his power over the rebellious 

* Hosea xi. 8. 



22 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

tribes, he must prevent them from assembling at 
Jerusalem as had been their wont, reasoned 
thus: " If this people go up to do sacrifice in the 
house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the 
heart of this people turn again unto their lord, 
even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they 
shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam, king of 
Judah." In order to strengthen his hold upon 
them he revived the ancient calf-worship, with 
which they had become familiar in Egypt. Tak- 
ing counsel of his evil confederates, he made two 
calves of gold and said unto the people : " It is 
too much for you to go up to Jerusalem ; behold 
thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of 
the land of Egypt. And he set one in Bethel, 
and the other in Dan." Cut off from the wor- 
ship of Jehovah in Jerusalem, the people of 
Israel soon forgot the God of their fathers, and 
followed after strange gods. In the expressive 
language of the text they became joined to idols 
— in love with them — wedded to them. 

Now Judah, although tainted with idolatry, 
was in the main true to God. The prophet, 
drawing a contrast, says : " Ephraim compasseth 
me about with lies, even the house of Israel with 
deceit, but Judah yet ruleth with God, and is 
faithful among the saints." And in the text 
under consideration, God, through his faithful 
servant Hosea, exhorts the people of Judah to 



A CASTAWAY RECLAIMED. 23 

let Ephraim or Israel alone, lest by keeping com- 
pany with him, they become infected with idol- 
atry. Again he says : " Though thou Israel play 
the harlot, yet let not Judah offend, and come 
not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth- 
aven." How needful this expostulation : The 
men of Judah were neighbors, and kinsmen to 
the men of Israel ; and the Lord knew that if 
once they began, under cover of friendship, to 
attend their idol festivals they would be ensnared. 
Hence he, in effect, says : — " Go not upon the 
devil's ground; turn away your faces and your 
feet from these places of vanity ! Ephraim is 
glued to idols, let him alone ! Do not keep com- 
pany with him or he will make you as corrupt as 
he is himself." 

A very practical lesson, this. The only safe 
course for any one is to shun the society of the 
ungodly ; " to have no fellowship with the 
unfruitful works of darkness." " Evil commu- 
nications corrupt good manners." Nothing is 
more ruinous than evil companionships. " Enter 
not into the path of the wicked, and go not in 
the way of evil men. Avoid it, do not even go 
across it, turn from it and pass away." 

This is a very different thought, however, from 
the one which has been too frequently extorted 
from these words. When rightly understood, 
this text gives no countenance to the fearful 



24 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

doctrine that when wickedness reaches a certain 
point God leaves men to themselves — gives them 
up to perish hopelessly in their sins ; that when 
the need is sorest he cuts the soul adrift and 
abandons it to its fate ; that when sin abounds 
grace diminishes, until it fades completely out. 

There is thus no warrant furnished by the text 
before us for leaving the most notorious sinner 
alone, in the sense of ceasing to make him an 
object of reforming effort. This is exactly the 
thing which the Christian ambassador is not to 
do. Down to the dying moment he is to stand 
beside the sinner telling of the mercy that stoops 
to receive the fragments of a wasted life ; telling 
of the blood of sprinkling, and challenging earth 
and hell to show a sin it cannot cleanse. 

In the treatment of a peculiarly aggravated 
type of a transgressor — one who has come within 
the circle of Christian discipleship, and has pre- 
viously wronged a member of the Christian 
brotherhood — the rule laid down is, " Restore 
such an one in the spirit of meekness, consider- 
ing thyself lest thou also be tempted." But 
should the wrong-doer prove unrelenting, should 
all efforts to win him back prove abortive, what 
then? "Let him be unto thee as a heathen 
man and a publican." Does that mean, " Spurn 
him from you ; let him feel the fire of your indig- 
nation ; let him be given up to walk unhindered 



A CASTA WA Y RECLAIMED. 2 5 

in the path to ruin?" No. This rather is the 
meaning: — " If by his evil conduct he has denied 
the faith, and you cannot longer fellowship with 
him as a Christian, treat him as a brother man ; 
treat him as Christ treated heathen men and pub- 
licans ; labor and pray for his repentance and 
restoration." Church discipline has for its ulti- 
mate aim the recovery of the fallen. Hope of 
realizing this aim ought never to be abandoned. 
When upon an infamous transgressor the sever- 
est ecclesiastical penalties must needs be visited, 
the end to be sought is, "to deliver such an one 
to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his 
spirit may be saved, in the day of the Lord."* 

It is of the utmost moment to catch the spirit 
of divine hopefulness which irradiates the Bible ; 
and so be led to see a possible saint in every act- 
ual devil. Untiring effort to save, can spring only 
from unfailing hopefulness of success. When 
hope dies effort will cease. Unfaith in the possi- 
bility of the reformation of the worst of men will 
show itself in the absence of works. The un- 
scriptural doctrine that some men are in a hope- 
less state will always bear its legitimate fruit in 
the paralyzing of Christian endeavor. No sane 
man will continue his efforts to resuscitate a 
corpse. If the vital spark has fled, every motive 

* 1 Cor. v. 5. 



26 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

for further exertion is taken away. It has some- 
times happened, however, that people have been 
laid out for burial before they were really dead, 
and those who have been hastening them to inter- 
ment have been surprised by unmistakable signs 
of returning vitality. And in like manner souls 
that were given up for burial in the grave of 
hopelessness have not unfrequently been quick- 
ened into newness of life. 

Turning to Ephraim we find that he did actu- 
ally repent. The castaway was reclaimed ; the 
dead became alive ; the apostate returned to the 
pure faith from which he had drifted away. His 
inner disposition and outward conduct alike were 
changed. He came to loathe what once he had 
loved, and to love what once he had loathed. 
With the deepest revulsion of feeling, he ex- 
claimed, " What have I any more to do with 
idols!" That to which his heart had been 
"joined " he cast away as a thing abhorred. And 
God, who is rich in mercy and ready to forgive, 
was quick to observe the first sign of penitence. 
" I have heard him and observed him," he says. 
" When he was yet a great way off, his Father 
saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell 
on his neck, and kissed him." 



GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 



" Grace works into the natural life of a man a supernatural 
life, which differs from the former as essentially as the world of 
glory differs from the present world of decay." — Dr. Franz 
Delitzsch. 

" Give me a man who is choleric, abusive in his language, 
headstrong and unruly ; and with a very few words — the words of 
God — he shall be rendered gentle as a lamb. Give me a greedy, 
avaricious, close-fisted man, and I will presently return him to 
you a generous creature, freely bestowing his money by handfuls. 
Give me a cruel, blood-thirsty wretch, instantly his ferocity shall 

be transformed into a truly mild and merciful disposition 

In one laver — the laver of Regeneration — all his wickedness shall 
be washed away." — Lactantius. 



III. 

GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 

" Total depravity" in the sense of general or 
universal depravity is an incontrovertible doc- 
trine ; but total depravity in the sense of com- 
plete depravity in the individual is a doctrine 
which falsifies human history, and vilifies human 
nature. There is something good in man. 
Human nature produces other and better crops 
than weeds of wickedness. As sweet, fragile 
flowers are found growing upon barren deserts, 
among the snows of Lapland, or on the mouths 
of slumbering volcanoes, so in corrupt hearts are 
often found some of the fairest flowers of virtue. 
In man at his worst there remain some vestiges 
of goodness, some hint of the glory from which 
he has fallen. Were depravity total in the indi- 
vidual there would be nothing to save ; nothing 
would be left to work upon for the restoration of 
man to spiritual health. Nevertheless, the mel- 
ancholy fact remains that the strongest tendency 
in man is towards evil. Viewed abstractedly sin 
is an unnatural thing: it is a violation of the laws 



30 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

of the moral nature of man. " Whoso sinneth 
against God wrongeth his own soul." Viewed 
practically it is natural to the depraved heart to 
fall into sin. The corrupt tree bringeth forth 
bad fruit. " The wicked are estranged from the 
womb ; they go astray as soon as they be born, 
speaking lies." 

There is one patent mark of natural depravity 
of which the Scriptures give special mention, viz., 
wrath, or anger. All men are said to be "by 
nature children of wrath."* That is to say, all 
men are by natural disposition and tendency 
prone to wrath or anger. The reference is not to 
wrath of which they are the objects but to wrath 
of which they are the subjects. " Children of 
wrath " are those of whom wrath or anger is pred- 
icate, just as " children of disobedience " men- 
tioned in the previous verse, are those of whom 
disobedience is predicable, " disobedient children." 

But, assuming for the nonce that the reference 
is to divine, punitive wrath, the question arises, 
who are the objects of divine wrath ? Men as 
men, or men as sinners ? Unquestionably the 
latter. The children of disobedience, and the 
children of wrath are one and the same. And is 
it not in perfect harmony with the natural con- 
stitution and course of things that children of 

* Eph. ii. 3. 



GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 3 I 

disobedience, who fulfill the desires of the flesh 
and the mind, should be also children of wrath ? 
" It would," says Dr. Morison," be utterly unnat- 
ural were any but the children of disobedience 
to be the children of wrath ; but it is nat- 
ural that all the children of disobedience should 
be children of wrath." If the objective meaning 
of the term " wrath " be insisted upon, Meyer is 
undoubtedly right in asserting that it is only 
through the development of natural disposition 
into actual sin that men become the objects 
of divine wrath. The presence of inborn quali- 
ties can never of itself make man the object of 
divine displeasure and punishment. Man is not 
responsible for his natural tendencies and inclina- 
tions, but solely for his conduct in reference to 
them. So long as evil tendencies are resisted 
there can be no guilt ; only when welcomed and 
yielded to does temptation become sin. Moral 
tendency may depend upon things beyond the 
sphere of choice, but moral character is always 
the result of moral action. " To suppose that a 
being may be morally evil before he has done 
evil, is to suppose that a moral character may be 
made for him, and not by him." Inherited ten- 
dencies to evil are misfortunes, not crimes ; they 
demand pity, not blame. It is actual sin, and 
actual sin alone, that brings any one under the 
wrath of God. 



32 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

By the great majority of commentators the 
question has never once been raised, whether the 
wrath here referred to may not, after all, be sub- 
jective rather than objective ; whether, in other 
words, the reference is not to the wrath of man 
rather than to the wrath of God. It has been 
quietly taken for granted that these words teach 
the hideous dogma that man is born an object of 
divine wrath and condemnation ; that before he 
has committed a single sin, he carries within him 
an "inborn childship of wrath." Augustine in 
view of this text did not hesitate to affirm that 
"as soon as man is conceived he is condemned." 
Calvin, echoing Augustine, is certain that " Paul 
testifies that we are born with sin, as serpents 
bring from the womb their poison." Dr. Charles 
Hodge, echoing Calvin, declares that, "the truth 
here taught is . . that mankind as a race are 
fallen, that they had their probation in Adam, 
and therefore are born in a state of condem- 
nation." 

One fatal objection to the above interpretation 
is that the term " children," in the expression 
"children of wrath," does not mean babes; but 
is employed metaphorically to denote those who 
are under the dominion of wrath, as children 
are under the dominion of a parent. Children of 
wrath are not those who are born under wrath, 
but those who by the peculiarity of their being, 



GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 33 

are predisposed to wrath. Their inclination to 
wrath is not acquired, but is inherent and inher- 
ited. In a word, it is natural. 

It lies entirely outside the present purpose of 
the Apostle to discuss the question of original 
sin. His object is a more practical one. He 
sees men in the pit of evil, lost and helpless, and 
his one concern is to get them out. He does not 
bend over them asking them how they got there. 
He does not stop to inquire whether they fell 
into the pit, or were born in it. It is enough 
that they are there; unable to deliver themselves. 
Every struggle to escape reveals the presence 
within them of a principle of evil which has 
gained the mastery over their moral natures. 
They are prone to evil. They are by nature 
children of all unrighteousness. 

Anger is only one sample of the poisonous 
growth which springs up rank and abundant in 
the human heart. The name of sin is Legion. 
The native, inborn propensities of man incline 
him to every form of sin. Before he is quick- 
ened by grace he lives in the unbridled lusts of 
the flesh. There is within him no holy restraining 
power. According to the very constitution and 
order of things he is the child or slave of his own 
unhallowed desires. Perhaps in nothing is the 
sinful nature of man so obviously manifested as 
in the tendency to anger. All men are by nature 
3. 



34 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

" children of anger.' ' Even if brought up in the 
society of angels their natural disposition to 
anger would crop out. One of the first fruits 
which the evil tree of human nature yields is 
anger. Witness this in the case of the infant 
whose wish has been crossed or left ungratified. 
It is no wonder then that this sin should have 
been singled out as a special mark of natural 
depravity. It is a typical sin, a sin common to 
the race. It is also a destructive sin, withering 
like the fiery breath of the simoon every grace 
in the garden of the soul. 

Interpreting the word " wrath " in a subjective 
sense, the whole phrase " children of wrath " will 
fall into place as part of a sharply drawn contrast 
between what men are by nature, and what they 
are by grace. By nature they are children of dis- 
obedience, by grace children of obedience ; by 
nature children of darkness, by grace children of 
light ; by nature children of wrath, by grace chil- 
dren of love ; by nature children of Satan, by 
grace children of God. When grace conquers 
nature, natural disposition is changed, natural 
inclination and desire are reversed, unholy pas- 
sion is subdued, the fierce hell-fire which raged 
within the breast is quenched. Among the de- 
mons exorcised when Christ enters the heart, 
is the demon of anger. From those who were 
formerly the slaves of ungoverned passions 



GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 35 

" All bitterness and wrath, and anger are put 
away." 

At a single stroke the foundations are thus cut 
away from beneath the common excuse : " I 
cannot help being overcome with passion ; I am 
a child of anger ; I have inherited a hot, ungov- 
ernable temper ; it is as natural for me to flare 
up with anger when provoked, as it is for gun- 
powder to explode at the touch of fire." Unholy 
anger is natural, of that there is no denial ; but 
is it Christian ? Cannot the grace of God change 
nature into that which is above nature ? Can 
it not transform the natural man into the spir- 
itual man ? Can it not alter the inward disposi- 
tion, so that whereas the prevailing tendency has 
been towards evil it shall henceforth be towards 
good? Cannot the principle of righteousness 
which Christ imparts vanquish the inborn prin- 
ciple of sin, so that in spite of some remaining 
roots of bitterness hidden in the renewed heart 
the life shall be characterized by the fruits of the 
Spirit, which are " love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self- 
control ? " 

When Zopyrus, reading the physiognomy of 
Socrates, said of him, to his astonished and indig- 
nant pupils, that his face was " the rendezvous of 
the vices," that it was the face of a man stupid, 
brutal, sensual, and addicted to drunkenness, the 



$6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

philosopher replied that by nature he was dis- 
posed to all these vices, and that they were only 
restrained and vanquished by the exercise of 
virtue. From whence he derived the power 
of virtue, by which he conquered his natural ten- 
dencies to evil, Socrates does not state. Was it 
from himself? Not so thought Aristotle, who 
says, " It is clear that not one of the moral 
virtues spring up in us by nature." Vice by 
nature, but not virtue, is the double testimony 
of Socrates and Aristotle. The origin of virtue 
was a secret which neither of them knew. Had 
they known it, they would have wept tears of 
joy. With a deeper insight into " the mystery 
of godliness," with a clearer knowledge of the 
source of all-sufficient moral help, than any 
heathen sage ever possessed, Paul exclaimed, 
" By the grace of God I am what I am : All 
that is good in me I ascribe to the continuous 
agency of divine grace operating upon me as a 
restraining and a sanctifying power." Thomas 
a Kempis is therefore standing upon Scriptural 
ground, when he p.rays : " O Lord, let that be- 
come possible to me by thy grace, which by 
nature seems impossible to me." 

Where grace reigns nature is conquered. 
Those who were at enmity to God are reconciled ; 
those who were disobedient are brought into 
loving, loyal submission ; those who were the 



GRACE CONQUERING NATURE. 37 

slaves of sinful passions are made meek and 
gentle. The transformation of children of wrath 
who " tear their prey with sharp-edged tooth and 
claw," into children of love, who hold out toward 
their bitterest enemy hands of blessing, is the 
crowning victory of grace. 



IV. 

PESSIMISTIC VIEW OF THE SPIR- 
ITUAL CONDITION OF MAN. 



" 111 habits gather by unseen degrees : 
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." 

Dryden's Ovid. 

" For use almost can change the stamp of nature, 
And master the devil, or throw him out 
With wondrous potency." 

Shakespeare, Hamlet. 

" The habitual tendency of vice as certainly determines the 
choice as even a total depravity. A decided majority in Parlia- 
ment carries every measure with as much certainty as if there 
were no minority." — A. Fuller. 



IV. 



A PESSIMISTIC VIEW OF THE SPIRITUAL CON- 
DITION OF MAN. 

THERE was a time when the prophet Jeremiah 
came almost to despair of effecting any moral 
reform among his people. Observing their fre- 
quent backslidings ; knowing that evil-doing had 
become a second nature with them ; perceiving 
that through the long and complete surrender of 
themselves to the dominion of sinful habits they 
had become bound with fetters which they could 
not break, his hope of seeing them reclaimed, 
never too strong at the best, had well nigh van- 
ished. Using words which in his day had passed 
into a proverb, he dispiritedly inquired : " Can 
the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his 
spots ? then may ye also do good, who are accus- 
tomed to do evil ; " or, more literally, " who are 
accustoming yourselves to do evil" * 

This proverbial utterance of the pessimistic 
prophet presents rather a dark picture of the 
moral situation ; but it must be admitted that it 

*Jer. xiii. 23. 



42 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

holds at the heart of it one hard, stubborn point 
of fact — namely, that the moral reform of habit- 
ual sinners is always extremely difficult. " Use 
doth breed a habit in a man," and habit strength- 
ened by every repetition of the acts which led to 
its formation, becomes, after long continued ex- 
ercise, solMified into character. Illustrating the 
force of habit, Dr. Boardman remarks : " The law 
of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. 
Sow an act and you reap a habit ; sow a habit 
and you' reap a character ; sow a character and 
you reap a destiny." Acts are the stuff out of 
which habits are made ; habits the warp and 
woof out of which the web of character is woven. 
Good habits grow with the growth of the soul, 
bad habits grow with the decay of the soul. The 
strength of a good habit is the measure of a 
man's strength; the strength of a bad habit 
is the measure of his weakness. Increasing 
strength to do right is the reward of " patient 
continuance in well-doing ; " increased weakness to 
resist the wrong, and to break away from it, is 
the penalty of habitual indulgence in evil-doing. 
All who accustom themselves to do evil find the 
practice of virtue more and more difficult. Each 
separate act of evil becomes an added strand in 
the cable of habit by which they are moored to 
the slimy shores of a fleshly life. How can they 
break the habits which have grown from cob- 



A PESSIMISTIC VIEW. 43 

webs into cables, and the strength of which is 
being constantly increased by every sinful act ? 
How can they cut loose from their vile moor- 
ings, and, taking advantage of the fast ebbing 
tide of opportunity strike sail for a life of right- 
eous liberty?- That is the problem which has 
vexed the righteous soul of many a prophet ! 
Possibility of deliverance there is none unless 
they can be aroused to grapple with the sin by 
which they have become enslaved. The practice 
of evil must be discontinued before the lessons of 
the new life are learned ; the way of wickedness 
must be forsaken before the good way is en- 
tered ; the old temple must be taken down before 
the new temple is built up ; the old man put off 
before the new man is put on. To attempt the 
changing of ingrained habits of evil without an 
intermission of the acts which led to their for- 
mation would be like attempting to wash the 
negro white. " Cease to do evil," is the first 
step in the way of reform ; " learn to do well," is 
the second : and not until the first step has been 
taken is the second possible. As by the double 
action of the lungs the bad air is exhaled before 
the good air is inhaled, so evil must be expelled 
from the heart before holiness enters. Repent- 
ance is first from sin, then to God. 

Under any circumstances the habits of a life- 
time are never easily displaced. They cannot be 



44 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

set aside, at any moment, like a garment. It is 
a deduction from universal observation that those 
who have been born and bred in sin abide in 
it, that those who from childhood have been 
trained up to walk in the way in which they 
should not go, keep on to the end in that broad 
and well beaten path. The cases are compara- 
tively few in which there is any sudden reform of 
evil habits, or any sudden breakdown of holy 
principle. The governing principle of life gen- 
erally remains unchanged to the last. Few 
repent in old age, fewer still at death. The re- 
flection of St. Augustine is full of heart-moving 
suggestiveness, that " there is one instance of 
deathbed repentance recorded in the Scriptures — 
the penitent thief — that none should despair, and 
only one, that none may presume." 

But, although difficult, the reform of the 
habitual sinner is not impossible. The prophet 
did not think that his people were altogether 
incorrigible. He did not look upon them as 
having passed the convertible stage ; as having 
got past being prayed for, or reasoned with. He 
seeks to rouse them to a sense of danger. He 
urges them to present action. This very chapter 
closes with the tender appeal, " Wilt thou be 
made clean? When shall it once be?" How 
long wilt thou defer repentance? How long will 
divine solicitude rebuke your indifference? 



A PESSIMISTIC VIEW. 45 

When will it once be, that, weary; of wickedness, 
and moved by divine pity, you will return to God 
that he may heal your backslidings ? 

The utmost that is expressed by the strong 
graphic words of the proverb under consideration 
is the extremely difficult, and not the absolutely 
impossible. Similar in meaning is the hyperboli- 
cal language in which Christ represents the great 
difficulty of discharging the responsibilities and 
overcoming the temptations of riches. " It is 
easier," he says, " for a camel to go through the eye 
of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the 
kingdom of God." Of this bold proverbial phrase 
Lightfoot remarks that " it was used in the 
schools to intimate a thing very unusual and 
very difficult." A qualifying expression is 
added, " What is impossible with man is possible 
with God." " God's grace," says Scott, " can sur- 
mount such difficulties as are impossible for 
nature to overcome, and thus we are to under- 
stand the passage before us." And thus also are 
we to understand the words of the prophet. 
Words that merely assert that no man can change 
his own heart or habits must not be given an 
interpretation which leaves out of view the con- 
trasted truth, which if not expressed is at least 
assumed, namely, that what man cannot do for 
himself the Almighty Grace of God can do for 
him. No man, it is true, can cleanse his own 



4.6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

heart and life, no man can, by his own efforts, get 
rid of the blackness of soul which is the result of 
self-developed character ; but where man fails 
upon himself Christ succeeds. His blood cleans- 
eth from all sin. Through the power of his cross 
the leprous nature of man may be renewed, the 
mark of the beast may be removed, the impure 
heart may be cleansed, the inbred habits which 
blackened the soul and spotted the life may be 
changed, the sin-seared wretch may be trans- 
formed into a heavenly child and made a fit com- 
panion for the angels. 

It is told of Bunyan that when garnishing his 
speech with oaths an abandoned woman adminis- 
tered to him a severe rebuke. The child's heart 
that still lived in him was touched. He hung his 
head in shame and silence. " While I stood 
there," he says, " I wished with all my heart that 
I might be a little child again, that my father 
might learn me to speak without this wicked way 
of swearing. This biographer adds, " He thought 
himself so accustomed to this evil habit that he 
could not leave it off ; but he did so from that 
moment." And that he did leave it off he him- 
self attributed to that divine grace, which, 
abounding to the chief of sinners, changed the 
skin of the Ethiop and the spots of the leopard. 

A friend wrote to Coleridge urging him to 
give up the -use of opium. "You bid me rouse 



A PESSIMISTIC VIEW. 47 

myself! Go, bid a man paralytic in both arms 
rub them briskly together, and that will save 
him. 'Alas!' he would reply, 'that I cannot 
move my arms is my complaint and misery.'' 
But what Coleridge was unable to do in his own 
strength he accomplished through the strength of 
God. Help came not from within but from with- 
out, or rather, from above. Turning from the cold 
comfort of an earth-born philosophy which said 
to one oppressed with a sense of weakness, " Be 
strong; 1 ' he listened to that voice of good cheer 
from heaven. "Be strong and of a good cour- 
age, and I will strengthen thine heart /" and, 
" Strong in the Lord and in the power of his 
might he brake asunder the shackles of his evil 
habit, as Samson his green withes." 

There are two symbolic works of art, the 
Laocoon and St. George and the Dragon, which 
may be taken as setting forth in contrasted form 
that irrepressible conflict of man with the alien 
forces of the spirit-world, which underlies all 
mythologies and religions. In the Laocoon, that 
peerless work of ancient sculpture, the death-like 
struggles of the priest-father as he vainly 
endeavors to tear the coiling serpents from him- 
self and children, presents a picture of man con- 
tending in his own might against the mightier 
powers of evil. The artist has caught the pas- 
sion at its highest point, — as Lessing with fine 



48 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

critical insight has pointed out. In the midst of 
a tempest of agony there is a calm like the peace- 
ful depths beneath the wind tossed surface of the 
sea. But the calm which overspreads the face, 
suffusing with subtle power the lines of pain, is 
not the calm of resignation or of hope, but of 
mute, heroic despair. The Laocoon is a confes- 
sion in marble of the failure of man at his best, to 
gain the mastery over evil. In St. George and 
the Dragon the same struggle is portrayed, but 
here the saint is victor. Entering the lists 
against the devouring, anarchic principle, of which 
the Dragon is the emblem, he returns from the 
conflict in triumph. The greatest object of 
human effort is attained, the highest hope of the 
human heart is met, the Dragon is slain, and man 
delivered. Deliverance is wrought out through 
the interposition of another. One whose heart 
heaven has touched with a spirit of holy chivalry 
wins, with his own strong arm, redemption for 
the weak. Fit emblem of the greater victory 
won by the "Strong Son of God," who came 
down to earth to rescue perishing souls from 
the Powers of darkness and sin ! 



V. 

THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 



"Christianity does more than present a system of ultimate 
morals. It throws in a force which evolution does not reckon 
upon, and which hastens on all currents for good, working in 
human life." — C. L. Brace. 

" It is not a bad thing for a man to have a tempest in the lower 
half of his face, if but he has a hurricane in the upper half. — 
Joseph Cook. 

" Temptations hurt not, though they have accesse, 
Satan o'ercomes none but by willingnesse." 

Herrick. 

" If they who wrought earth's crowning crime 
Were of thy intercession worthy, Lord ! 
Of whom shall fellow-sinners like ourselves 
Despair ? " 

P. J. Bailey. 



V. 

THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 

The one thing lacking alike in all purely 
materialistic schemes of evolution, and in all 
schemes of ethical self-culture whatsoever, is a 
starting-point. Who can bring life from death ? 
is the question of science. " Who can bring a 
clean thing out of an unclean?"* is the question 
of religion. The yawning gulf which stretches 
between a physical cause and a spiritual effect, 
or between a sinful cause and a holy effect can- 
not be bridged over by any theory of sponta- 
neous generation. " Life proceeds from life and 
from nothing but life."f Purity proceeds from 
purity and from nothing but purity. All living 
souls are the offspring of the living God ; all holy 
souls are the progeny of the Holy Spirit. 

Evolution works well enough after the starting- 
point has been secured. Given the seed, and the 
evolution of the flower follows; given a right 
heart, and a right life follows. But with man the 

* Job xiv. 4. f Huxley. 



52 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

seed is corrupt, the inner nature is denied ; and 
hence, looking at his case from the human stand- 
point, the question, " Who can bring a clean 
thing out of an unclean?" is answered, " Not 
one ! " No man can do it. Such a thing is 
contrary to the law of human generation. From 
an impure stock pure offspring cannot be brought 
forth ; from a polluted fountain a clean stream 
cannot flow. Clean children must have clean 
parents. When it is said of Adam that "he 
begat a son in his own likeness/' a particular 
instance is furnished of a general law. Like 
always begets like. 

It is indisputable that man has a sinful origin, 
that he comes from an unclean stock, that his 
life is polluted at the fountain-head. In a moral 
sense he is badly born. The Royal Singer of 
Israel spoke not for himself alone, but as the 
mouthpiece of the race, when he exclaimed: — 
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin 
did my mother conceive me."* Sorrowfully, but 
not remorsefully, he confesses the deep-seated 
nature of the evil from which he prays to be 
cleansed. Translating the strong poetic figures 
which he employs, into sober thought, this much 
of general truth remains:— Man has a sinful 
parentage; the world into which he is born 



* Psalms li. 5. 



THE LIMITS OF E VOL UTION. 5 3 

is sinful ; his body is contaminated with sin ; 
his soul tainted with sin. Even within the 
sphere of experience sin is no recent thing. 
The consciousness of self and the consciousness 
of sin rise like double stars in the soul together. 
Man goes astray, from the womb. Not a flat- 
tering picture, but a true one ! Let it be 
noted, however, that the declaration " in in- 
iquity was I born," does not mean " iniquity 
was born in me ; " nor does the declaration, " in 
sin did my mother conceive me" mean, "sin 
was conceived in me while I lay in the womb of 
my mother." Sin is not born into man, but 
done by him. The corrupt nature of man is 
not the cause but the occasion of sin. In the 
will, "the innermost core of personality," is found 
the cause of sin. Sin originates in the will of the 
sinner, and nowhere else. Every man is an orig- 
inal sinner. 

But while every man is an original sinner, no 
man is an original saint. Sin originates in man, 
righteousness in God. All who enter into eternal 
life are " born not of blood, nor of the will of the 
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The 
Chaldee paraphrase quoted by Henry, "Who 
can make a man clean that is polluted with sin ? 
Cannot one, that is God?" brings out this sup- 
plemental thought. Yes, God can change the 
heart; he can cleanse the fountain of life so that 



54 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

the outflowing streams shall be pure ; he can 
create a new nature from which a holy character 
shall be produced. When therefore it is asked, 
"Who can bring a clean thing out of an un- 
clean?" the doctrine of divine inability must not 
be deduced from words which merely teach the 
doctrine of human inability. That man is help- 
less to change his own nature cannot for a 
moment be questioned. But who shall dare to 
limit the Holy One of Israel? Who shall dare 
to set bounds to the Infinite ? Who shall dare 
to set up little theological stakes, saying to the 
onrushing tide of salvation, " Hitherto shalt 
thou come and no further?" Limit the ocean, 
limit the sun, but limit not the mercy of God to 
erring man ! There are limits to human power ; 
but there is no limit to the saving power of God, 
except that which man himself sets up — his own 
impenitence ; and when that is removed the 
renewing grace of God enters his heart. 

For the redemption of man nothing less than 
the incoming of the renewing grace of God will 
suffice. What man needs is not reformation from 
without, but regeneration from within. It is not 
enough to pick off the bitter fruit from the tree 
of his life, for fresh crops will come again ; the 
tree itself must be made good, and then will 
the fruit be good. It is not enough to put the 
transgressor behind the bars of outward restraint, 



THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 55 

for when he is set free he will return to his evil 
ways ; his nature must be changed and then will 
the desire for doing wrong be taken away. The 
sow that is washed is a sow still, and upon the 
first opportunity will return to her wallowing in 
the mire. Stories have been told of tigers which 
had been domesticated when young having all 
their natural ferocity aroused by the first taste of 
blood. The tiger-nature had not been changed ; 
it merely slumbered, and when played upon at 
some careless moment it was at once excited 
into activity. Just so is it with man when he 
has changed his outward habits without changing 
his heart ; the old corrupt nature is not dead but 
sleepeth, and may at any time be awakened by 
the touch of temptation. What is demanded is 
not the restraint of the old nature but its destruc- 
tion, not its improvement but its dislodgment. 
The old nature can never be improved into the 
new nature. Carnal character can never grow 
better and better until it generates spiritual life. 
In the divine order all outward reformation pro- 
ceeds from inward, vital change. First life, then 
culture ; first renewal, then development ; first a 
new heart, and then a new character ; first a 
germinal creation, then an evolution. 

When, and in what way does the germinal crea- 
tion, which forms the starting-point in the upward 
evolutionary process of the new life, take place ? 



56 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

It takes place as soon as God can bring it about ; 
and it takes place in harmony with the laws of 
man's nature. Upon the stream of natural law 
Heaven has launched the richly freighted vessel 
of redemption, in confidence that the onflowing 
tide will, in spite of every counter current, bear it 
forward to the destined port. Just as, in virtue 
of the organic unity of the race, the sin of " the 
first man Adam " affected the nature and charac- 
ter of all his descendants, influencing them medi- 
ately along the universal law of heredity, and not 
by some outward arbitrary act of immediate 
imputation ; so, along the same great law the 
saving grace of Christ has been inwrought into 
human nature, that the redemption of man 
might be wrought out from within. As the 
Spiritual Head of humanity Christ has put him- 
self into human life at the beginning, propa- 
gating and multiplying his influence through the 
law of heredity, which is of all the laws that 
mould and govern human life, the most powerful 
and far-reaching. From the moment that life 
has its genesis he is at work upon the embryonic 
soul, seeking through the cooperation of sancti- 
fied parenthood to obtain " a godly seed " with 
which to replant the world. Under him any 
father may become the new Adam of a better 
dispensation, modifying and lessening the ten- 
dencies to evil in his children ; purifying the 



THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION: 57 

polluted fountain of life before it breaks forth in 
a stream of actual transgression. From him as 
the secret source of spiritual life, goes forth a 
stream of redeeming power, which flowing par- 
allel with the turbid tide of inherited depravity, 
may, whenever man himself shall so elect, be 
united with it, overcoming and cleansing it. 
However strong may be the power of inherited 
evil, the power of inherited grace may prove 
to be stronger. Not that piety itself can be 
inherited, but the inclination thereto may be. 
This delightful possibility is certainly implied in 
the words of Paul to Timothy: "I am filled with 
joy when I call to remembrance the unfeigned 
faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy 
grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, 
and, I am persuaded, in thee also." Why may 
not all parents give to their children a like 
precious heirloom ? Why may not the natural 
and the spiritual births be contemporaneous? 
Why may not generation and regeneration coa- 
lesce? Why may not the spiritual atmosphere 
be made congenial to the growth of piety ? Why 
may not the soul from its first unfolding be 
baptized with heavenly influences ? Why may 
not the spirit of purity brood over the young life 
from the first moment of its existence, and work 
for the counteracting of its inherited depravity? 
Why may not divine grace prevent the ruin of 



58 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

the soul, instead of coming in after the catas- 
trophe with remedial influences? Why may not 
the devil be forestalled, and the soul be pre- 
empted for God? In a word, why may not the 
powers of good overmatch the powers of evil in 
the struggle for supremacy, and that blessed 
state of things be at length reached, in which the 
soul is tempted to good ? 

But, wherever the genetic starting-point of 
the new life may be located, the main thing to 
be kept in view is that it is always directly 
traceable to the presence of the life-giving Spirit 
in the heart. Sinful man holds within himself 
no power of self-recovery from the damage which 
his moral nature has received. " A corrupt tree 
cannot bring forth good fruit." A fallen nature 
cannot produce a perfect life any more than a 
broken instrument can send forth melodious 
sounds. Restoration to spiritual health can 
come only through the communication of re- 
cuperative grace, by which the evil reigning 
within the heart is destroyed, and the good still 
lingering there is drawn out and perfected. 
Broken character can be repaired only by the 
inworking of a supernatural power, converting 
the activities which it awakens into a process of 
restoration. Tis the divinity that stirs within 
him — 't is the living Christ that dwells within him 
that intimates to man the possibility of redemp- 



THE LIMITS OF E VOL UTION. 5 9 

tion. The healing fountain which man finds 
opened in his heart, is not from himself, but 
from Christ present in him. 

The moral consciousness of every man testifies 
that far back as anything can be traced there is, 
working alongside the power that makes for evil, 
a power which he can oppose to his own destruc- 
tion ; a power to which he can join himself, and 
be lifted up out of moral degradation into god- 
likeness of character. Through personal partici- 
pation, this regenerative power is transmuted 
into regenerated life. Within the open heart it 
operates remedially, going down to the root of 
the disease in the moral nature of man, bruising 
the head of evil ; striking at the spirit and essence 
of sin ; destroying wrong feelings; renovating un- 
holy desire ; empowering the enfeebled will ; dis- 
lodging the strong man of self by the coming 
in of the stronger man of love; producing out- 
ward change of conduct by an inward change 
of nature ; accomplishing, in short, a thorough, 
radical change in the governing thoughts of 
the mind, choices of the will, affections of the 
heart, and principles of the life. The lion is 
changed into the lamb, the wilderness is made to 
blossom as the rose, the soil of the moral nature, 
out of which all character springs, is altered ; so 
that " instead of the thorn comes up the fir tree, 
and instead of the brier comes up the myrtle 



60 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

tree.'* All theories of natural sequence are com- 
pletely overturned. Strength is brought out of 
weakness, the sweet is brought out of the bitter, 
the clean is brought out of the unclean. Volup- 
tuaries like Augustine are lifted up out of the 
mire of sensuality in which they long have wal- 
lowed, into a life of purity ; rude blasphemers 
like John Bunyan, the Bedford tinker, have 
" grace poured upon their lips;" scoffing profli- 
gates like John Newton feel the hand of the Lord 
laid upon them, and instantly they cease to be 
the servants of sin and become servants of holiness, 
" preaching the faith of which they once made 
havoc ; " pitiful inebriates like John B. Gough 
are checked in their mad career of sin and shame, 
by the tender pleading of the divine voice speaking 
within their hearts ; and, turning in their weak- 
ness to the sole source of help, their fetters are 
broken, the demon of drunkenness is exorcised ; 
and touched with the Lord's own pity they 
thenceforth spend their lives in reclaiming moral 
waifs who are drifting down the stream of life 
towards the dark gulf of hopeless ruin. Some- 
thing happens in many lives by which human 
nature at its worst is transformed into human 
nature at its best ; something happens by which 
lives of selfishness are changed into lives of 
benevolence, and lives of sin into lives of holiness. 
From among the world's outcasts sovereign grace 



THE LIMITS OF E VOL UTION. 6 1 

wins richest trophies. A host of living witnesses 
stand ready to render happy and triumphant tes- 
timony to the incoming of a power not of earth, 
a power mightier than sin, a power which proved 
to be to them in their low and lost estate, the 
moral omnipotence of God, unto salvation. 

Rule regeneration out and man is bound hand 
and foot by the law of heredity, which is to him 
a law of sin and death ; every sinful tendency 
bred in the bone comes out in the flesh; inherited 
evil spreads unchecked until the whole moral 
nature becomes incurably diseased. Rule regen- 
eration in and the law of heredity although not 
destroyed is intercepted, the entail is broken, a 
new evolutionary process is established, a new 
start is given to the life of a moral being. With 
the impartation of a new principle of life, regen- 
eration begins. From life and not to life is the 
way in which evolution works. 

But whence comes life ? Whence can it come 
save from God, the fountain of life ? " The gift 
of God is eternal life, and this life is in his Son ;" 
— and by him it is ministered to the world. The 
new heart is not an evolution but an impartation. 
" I will give you a new heart," is the word of 
divine promise. Shut up to the renewing grace 
of God as the only power unto regeneration, 
what can man in his helplessness do but look 
heavenward and pray, " Create within me a clean 



62 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

heart, O God \ and renew a right spirit within 
me"? 

Truly wonderful is the reluctance of many to 
believe that man's extremity is God's opportuni- 
ty, that abounding sin is met with superabound- 
ing grace, that regenerative power universal in 
the world and in the individual, sufficient at once 
to redeem all men and to redeem the zvhole man, 
has been put into present operation. Into the 
gospel of grace a legal spirit has been imported. 
It is thought that before the penitent is received 
into the kingdom of God he ought to be kept 
riding at quarantine ; that before the prodigal is 
allowed to return home he ought to be stripped 
of his rags. " To-day shalt thou be with me in 
Paradise," is changed into, "After thou hast 
stood in the outer darkness long enough to make 
amends for past transgressions, the doors of 
Paradise will open to receive you." Death-bed 
repentance is, of course, treated with incredulity. 
A distant hint of the bare possibility of the con- 
trite murderer dropping from the scaffold into 
the arms of Infinite Mercy, calls forth a chorus 
of derision. It is treated as a thing incredible 
that a soul besotted by wickedness, whom the 
shock of impending death has awakened to utter 
an agonizing cry for mercy, should be instantly 
forgiven. " Hoaven is for the penitent, it is 
urged ; but heaven is not so easily won that the 



THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. 6$ 

repentance of a moment can wash away the sin 
of a lifetime : God is merciful, but he is also 
just, and before the sinner can be forgiven and 
renewed he must gather in the full harvest of his 
iniquity." From the standpoint of law this 
elder-brother reasoning is right ; from the stand- 
point of love it is wrong. Justice demands that 
men reap as they have sown ; the interposition of 
mercy makes it possible for them to reap what 
they have not sown. Standing in the grace of 
Christ, those who have sown death reap life ; 
those who have sown hell reap heaven. The law 
of moral continuity is reversed ; for development 
there is change ; for evolution, revolution ; for 
the survival of the fittest, the survival of the 
unfittest ; for the salvation of the most hopeful, 
the salvation of the least hopeful. Publicans and 
harlots enter the kingdom of God before the 
self-righteous scribes and Pharisees. The last are 
first, and the first last. 

Is it said that if man were left to himself 
every moral movement would be downward ; 
that all progress would be from bad to worse ; 
and that thenceforth there would remain only the 
sad possibility of self-ruin, without the blessed 
alternative of self-redemption? Left to himself ! 
In that sad plight no child of the Eternal Father 
is ever found. Into the foaming current of evil 
no hapless soul is thrown, to be swept on to a 



64 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

resistless fate. Constant and uniform as the 
operations of natural law, are the operations of 
the Spirit of God upon every heart. Within the 
ruined nature of man Christ the restorer abides; 
and whenever his presence is welcomed, and his 
grace received, miracles of moral might are 
wrought ; the taint of evil is removed ; hereditary 
tendencies are conquered ; the order of develop- 
ment is thereafter upward and not downward, 
towards righteousness and not towards sin, 
towards life and not towards death. Of all who 
unite themselves with the regenerative power 
operating within them, it may be said : " They 
go from strength to strength, every one of them 
in Zion appeareth before God," 



VI. 

MORAL MIRACLES. 



" The church is the expanded gospel because it bears the life 
of Christ within itself." — Lange. 

" As gravitation is universal by reaching the masses through 
its action upon each particle, so Christianity seeks to become 
universal by dealing with men as individuals." — Mark Hopkins. 

" Christianity has carried civilization along with it whitherso- 
ever it has gone ; and, as if to show that the latter does not 
depend upon physical causes, some of the countries the most civ- 
ilized in the days of Augustus are now in a state of hopeless 
barbarism." — Guesses at Truth, A. W. and J. C. Hare. 

" Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of the Cross! 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than the cross could sound." 

Whittier. 



VI. 

MORAL MIRACLES. 

WITH plenitude of power at her command, 
what a melancholy spectacle to men and angels 
does the Church of the risen living Christ 
present, standing in conscious and confessed im- 
potence, unable to cast out the spirit of evil from 
afflicted humanity ! A crowd of unfriendly wit- 
nesses beholding with undisguised delight her 
sad discomfiture ask in derision, " Where is now 
your divine Christ ? You boast of being his 
agent and representative. We would see a sign 
from you in confirmation of your claim ; let new 
miracles substantiated by living witnesses be pro- 
duced, and we will believe that the Almighty 
Christ is with you, of a truth." The demand is 
reasonable. A divine religion ought to be able 
to give continuous attestation of power to per- 
form divine works. From an institution laying 
claim to the indwelling of a power higher than 
human, nothing short of a superhuman witness 
will be accepted. 

Pledging to his people power to perform 



68 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

mighty works which should startle men from 
their sense-bound dreams, Jesus said, " He that 
believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do 
also, and greater works than these shall he do."* 
What ! greater works than these which their eyes 
beheld? Greater works than healing the sick, 
opening the eyes of the blind, and giving life to 
the dead? Yes: greater works than these. Not 
greater physical works certainly ; not works 
greater in degree, but in kind. Efforts have been 
made to show that the miracles of the apostles 
were greater in degree than those of the Master. 
Christ healed with the hem of his garment, Peter 
with his shadow, Paul with his handkerchief. 
This, says Stier, " is a petty interpretation." 
The reference is evidently to spiritual works. 
Did Christ feed the hungry with bread? It is 
given to the Church to feed famishing souls with 
heavenly truth and love. Did Christ make the 
lame to walk? It is given to the Church to 
make moral cripples walk erect in renewed man- 
hood. Did Christ open blind eyes? To the 
Church it is given to open the eyes of the under- 
standing. Did Christ make the dumb to speak? 
To the Church it is given to make dumb souls 
sing the praises of their Redeemer. Did Christ 
cast out demons? To the Church has been 

* John xiv. 12, 



MORAL MIRACLES. 69 



.liU 



given power to cast out of the human heart, ai 
out of human society, the demons of pride, envy, 
selfishness and lust. Did Christ raise the dead ? 
To the Church has been given power to raise 
souls dead in sin into newness of life before God. 
For a partial fulfillment of the promise of Christ, 
look at the wonders wrought upon the day of 
Pentecost. Three thousand souls converted ! 
Three thousand natures changed ! Three thou- 
sand moral beings delivered from the power of 
sin, and led to choose, to love, and to practise a 
life of holiness ! Was not this a greater work 
than any display of power in the physical realm 
would have been? How poor and paltry along- 
side these supernatural works of moral power, 
appeared the miracles of physical force, which 
often did nothing more than attract and dazzle 
the onlooker! Not until the Church was freed 
from the outward signs and wonders which were 
incidental to an early stage of her development ; 
and which, while they served a temporary pur- 
pose, were in no sense to be numbered among 
the essentials of Christianity, did she stand forth 
clothed in spiritual power alone, bearing her own 
witness to the world ; a kingdom not of earth, a 
kingdom that is to depend for the perpetuation 
of her existence and influence upon the spiritual 
power by which she was founded ; a kingdom to 
which any admixture of worldly power will prove 



yo UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

to be like feet of clay to an image of gold ; — 
a blot upon her beauty and a sure and certain 
cause of ruin. 

The principle of development characterizes the 
plan of redemption in all its historical outwork- 
ings. Beginning in types dim and shadowy, the 
manifestations of truth and grace move upon a 
constantly ascending scale until they culminate 
in the God-man. So with manifestations of 
divine power. Beginning in the physical sphere 
they gradually ascend until they end in the 
spiritual sphere. Miracles take on a higher form ; 
they move along a higher plane ; they pass from 
the realm of nature into the realm of grace. 
Works are wrought which more strikingly dis- 
play the glory of Christ than did the raising of 
the dead. Souls are raised from the death of 
sin to a life of righteousness ; and the raising of 
dead souls is a higher work, a work demanding 
the exercise of a higher kind of power than the 
raising of dead bodies from the tomb. The 
miracles of Christ were themselves parables ; 
sensible representations of moral works ; visible 
signs of the reality and supremacy of an inner 
spiritual kingdom, of which the material world is 
but the outward shadow. The evidential value 
of the miracles lay in the testimony which they 
bore to the almightiness of Christ as the Lord 
of nature and the Saviour of men. By them men 



MORAL MIRACLES. J\ 

were taught that Christ had power to deliver 
from inward evil ; for no one could reasonably 
doubt that he who could say to the sick of the 
palsy, " I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy 
bed and go unto thy house," had power on 
earth to forgive sins. 

Works of supernatural power in the physical 
realm are no longer needed to bear witness to 
the working of the divine hand in the spiritual 
realm. The greater spiritual works speak for 
themselves, and bear upon their forefront indu- 
bitable evidence that they are wrought of God. 
Thus the argument from miracles takes on a 
higher form ; the less being superseded by the 
greater. A higher order of works suggests a 
higher order of power, and furnishes a higher 
order of testimony. " Greater works " are per- 
formed as the result of a superadded enduement 
bestowed upon those who already possessed power 
to work miracles on a lower plane. Unrestricted 
to any special class of christians the new gift of 
power descends upon the universal church, break- 
ing out on the upper side of things in mar- 
vels of moral change wrought in human hearts 
and lives, which afford to an unbelieving world 
the same convincing proof of the divine origin of 
Christianity, that the miracles of Christ afforded 
of his Messiahship. 

Too often has the Church taken the lower 



72 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

ground, depending less than it was her privilege 
to do upon the spiritual power of which she is 
the conservator, and which she is the chosen ves- 
sel to convey to an unregenerate world ; yet, by 
her practical power to regenerate human charac- 
ter she has never failed to make good, in some 
measure, her claim of standing in the Pentecostal 
line of succession, the direct representative and 
agent of the Almighty Christ. Her answer to 
those to come to her as messengers from the 
world inquiring, Is the Lord among you or not? 
is this, " Go and tell what things ye do hear and 
see ; tell of lives redeemed, tell of new miracles, 
miracles of grace, miracles of spiritual power 
wrought by the feeblest of instrumentalities, and 
ask if these things do not present indisputable 
proof of the indwelling presence of the Lord of 
Glory." It is a commonly expressed sentiment 
regarding any one far gone in sin ; No human 
power can save him ! Nothing but the grace of 
God can save him ! Nothing short of a miracle 
can save him ! How true this is! Culture is not 
omnipotent ; philosophy is vain ; will-power 
when substituted for divine power is the merest 
mockery. The supernatural power of divine 
grace, and nothing else, can save all types 
and classes of men, from the highest to the 
lowest. 

Is it asked ; If salvation be of the Lord, how 



MORAL MIRACLES. J$ 

can man save his brother? He can save him in- 
strumentally ; he can save him as the agent of a 
higher power. Although possessing no power in 
himself he can be the hand which the divine 
worker uses, the channel through which the 
divine power is dispensed. Not apart from 
Christ, but in his strength and in his name are 
the greater works of saving power performed. 
Christ himself is content to remain out of sight ; 
he hides behind his people ; works in them ; im- 
parts to them his mighty power; and allows them 
to receive the credit for the works which he has 
enabled them to perform. " Christ has sown, we 
reap," exclaims Stier, "and the harvest is greater 
than the seed-time." 

Were anything further needed to show that 
the "greater works" are spiritual works, it 
would only be necessary to consider the ground 
upon which the promise of power to perform 
them, is made to rest. " Greater works than 
these shall ye do," said Jesus, " because I go unto 
my Father." I go unto my Father to be en- 
throned in the seat of power ; I go unto my 
Father to secure for you that baptism of the 
Spirit which will qualify you to act in my room 
and stead in the spiritual kingdom which* I am 
about to set up, and empower you to carry to 
completion the work of the world's redemp- 
tion. 



74 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

Because Christ still abides within his Church 
in the power of the Spirit, her power to perform 
spiritual miracles remains. Into her hands has 
been put an instrument by which she can accom- 
plish greater wonders than those performed by 
the wonder-working rod of Moses. She has a 
gospel to proclaim which is mighty through God 
to the pulling down of the strongholds of sin, 
and to the building up of the kingdom of right- 
eousness. Wherever the gospel is preached 
moral transformations are accomplished which 
require for their explanation the operation of a 
supernatural power; and which draw from the 
most reluctant lips the acknowledgment, " What 
hath God wrought ! " 

No more thrilling romance has ever been writ- 
ten than the plain, unvarnished recital of the 
triumphs of the gospel during the last century. 
Things which were deemed impossible have 
taken place. By the introduction of a vital, 
practical Christianity, which makes its influence 
felt through medical missions, higher education, 
and the blessed work of woman in the jealously 
guarded Zenanas, the very atmosphere of social 
life in heathen lands has become impregnated 
with a subtle spirit of reform, and the most 
stupendous changes have gradually and silently 
been brought about. The walls of caste exclu- 
siveness have begun to crack and crumble ; 



MORAL MIRACLES. 75 

human sacrifices and infanticide have been 
suppressed ; polygamy and slavery have been 
abolished ; humaner customs and juster laws 
have been established. But it is among the 
most debased classes at home, and the most 
debased races abroad that the power of the liv- 
ing, conquering, reigning Christ has been most 
marvellously exhibited. Great moral changes, 
which those only who are spiritually blind 
have failed to see, have taken place. In the 
city slums and in the rural wastes many have 
been raised from the lowest depths of brutality 
and vice to lives of sweetness and purity. Upon 
the rising tide of spiritual power the lowest 
classes — the classes lowest in the moral scale — 
have been lifted up to a higher plane. Religion 
has become more vital ; Christendom has become 
more Christian. Among the most degraded 
heathen nations a new type of civilization, dis- 
tinctively Christian, has been introduced : the 
naked savage has been clothed ; houses have 
been built ; improved methods of agriculture 
have been promoted ; trades have been learned ; 
schools and churches established ; the unfortu- 
nate cared for ; woman elevated ; marriage hon- 
ored ; and where before was heard the revelling 
of diabolical heathen orgies, the hushed and holy 
voice of family worship may now be heard. 
Nowhere is the work of individual or .social re- 



76 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

generation complete. Much remains to be clone. 
But a beginning has at least been made ; light 
has broken ; the currents of life have been 
altered ; souls have been won back to God, 
brought into conformity to his will, and assimi- 
lated to his character ; nations that were hasten- 
ing to extinction have been arrested on the way 
to death and put upon the upward path of prog- 
ress ; that " revivifying force," which according to 
Frederick Harrison — the apostle of Positivism — 
" life and society stand in need of," has by the 
hand of the Church been lodged in the heart of 
the world, and is secretly leavening the whole 
social lump. As chapter is added to chapter in 
the history of the aggressive christian agencies of 
to-day, confirmation is given to the conclusion of 
Dr. Christlieb in his " Survey of Foreign Mis- 
sions," " that no race is so spiritually dead that 
it cannot be quickened into new life by the 
"glad tidings," no language is so barbarous that 
the Bible cannot be translated into it ; no indi- 
vidual so brutish that he cannot become a new 
creature in Christ Jesus." * 

Overwhelmed by the vastness and difficulty of 
the work set before her, the Church, in her 
moments of despondency, cannot forbear from 
exclaiming, "Who is sufficient for these things?" 

* p. 23. 



MORAL MIRACLES. J J 

When, of old, the prophet Ezekiel was in like 
manner beginning to lose sight of the all-suffi- 
cient source of power, the Lord to confirm his 
faltering faith took him " in the spirit " into the 
midst of a valley which had been the scene of a 
great battle, and bade him look at the bleached 
bones of the slain. Inspecting them carefully 
the prophet saw that they were " very many and 
very dry." " Son of man, how can these dry 
bones live?" was the startling question put to 
the discouraged prophet. To human power it 
seemed impossible that they should ever live, 
but he wisely answered, " O Lord thou know- 
est." He did not know how it could be done, 
but he dared not limit the restoring power of the 
Holy One of Israel. When God is taken into 
account despair is banished. Looking at the 
wretched condition of the world, who has not 
wondered how the dry and sapless bones scat- 
tered over the plains of life could ever live 
again ! But faith falls back upon this — God 
knows how it can be done. What seems impos- 
sible to man is easy to God. If God be taken 
into account miracles either in the physical or 
moral spheres can no longer be looked upon as 
unnatural or impossible. " Is anything too hard 
for the Lord ? Is the Lord's arm shortened that 
it cannot save?" The Eternal Christ who says, 
" Behold I make all things new," can bring to- 



78 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

gether the disjointed bones of society and of 
man's moral nature, and quicken them by the 
breath of his mouth. He can, by the touch of 
his life-giving Spirit " create a soul under the 
ribs of death." To a divine Saviour all things are 
possible ; and what is possible to a divine Saviour 
is possible to the Church in which he abides and 
through which he acts. 



VII. 

THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 



Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind." 

" The All-Enfolding 
The All-Upholding 
Folds, and upholds he not 
Thee, me, Himself ? " 



" A sense o'er all my soul imprest 
That I am weak yet not unblest, 
Since in me, round me, everywhere 
Eternal strength and wisdom are." 



Goethe. 



Coleridge. 



' God enters by a private door into every individual." 



Emerson. 



VII. 

THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 

NEVER, perhaps, was more weight given than 
at present, to the influence of man's earthly 
environment upon the shaping of his life and 
destiny. Little room is left for the charge that 
too low an estimate is being made of the number 
and nature of these tributary influences which 
lead to the formation of moral habits. An 
ample share of credit is freely accorded to ances- 
try, physical constitution, climate, education, 
social position, companionships, home-training, 
and all the outward conditions and surroundings 
of life, for the power which they exert in the 
moulding of character. Indeed, the danger lies 
in making the earthly environment all in all, so 
that, given certain conditions of life, and a certain 
character can be infallibly predicted ; given a 
tropical or an arctic atmosphere of moral influ- 
ence, and a certain moral product is the inevi- 
table result. The character of man is thus pre- 
destined with the certainty of absolute fate. 

The doctrine of unconditioned predestination 
6 



$2 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

simply shifts ground. Driven from the Divine 
Will, it takes up its place in the outward environ- 
ment which the Divine Being has thrown around 
his creature, man. In either case the result is 
the same ; man is left in the iron grip of a power 
which he is helpless to resist— a power by which 
his whole life and destiny are absolutely deter- 
mined. 

An important factor has often been entirely 
lost sight of in computing the sum total of forces 
which go to the making up of character, namely, 
the divine environment — the environment of the 
human soul by the living God. This higher 
environment qualifies and balances the lower, 
and just because it is higher has proportionately 
more to do in giving form to character and direc- 
tion to destiny. God is the element in which all 
men live, the pervading presence by which all 
life is quickened, the power diffused through 
all things by which all creatures are sustained in 
being. " As the plant upon the earth, so man 
rests upon the bosom of God ; is nourished by 
unfailing fountains, and draws at his need inex- 
haustible power." * 

There is in Pantheism a great measure of truth. 
We have only to make the Pantheist's Soul of 
the Universe a conscious, intelligent being — a per- 

* Emerson. 



THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 83 

sonal God, in short, in order to have a true 
science of the world. God will not then be a 
dreary abstraction, he will not be put into the far 
distance as the Inscrutable, the Infinite, or the 
Eternal, but will be brought near and dwell 
among men, in close and abiding fellowship, as of 
old he dwelt among his people Israel. Witness 
this in the " Higher Pantheism " of Tennyson : — 

" The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, the hills, and the plains, 
Are not these, O Lord, the vision of him who reigns ? 
Speak to him then, for he hears, and spirit with Spirit can meet ; 
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet." 

Too little account has been taken by Christian 
thought of the immediate communication of God 
with the soul. Frequently the only entrance 
left open to God into the city of Mansoul has 
been the Gateway of Knowledge. The doctrine 
of the direct and conscious touch of God upon 
the human heart has been scouted as vague and 
mystical. But is it so ? Was not Pentecost a 
direct communication of power, rather than a 
revelation of new truth ? And is not the inward 
feeling or conviction of a divine overshadowing 
presence one of the most clearly recorded facts 
of consciousness? Is it not the great primary 
fact in human nature which forms the real basis 
of our knowledge of God ? Just as we receive 
the first knowledge of the outward world by 



84 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

sensation, so we receive the first knowledge of 
God from a sense of his brooding presence, a 
sense at first dim, but gradually growing clearer 
with the expanding of moral consciousness, until 
to the feeling of nearness there is joined the 
knowledge of sacred relationship ; and with all 
the spontaneity of natural love, and with all 
the certainty of knowledge, come the words, 
" Abba, Father. " * This upspringing of filial love 
by which " the Spirit Himself beareth witness 
with our spirit that we are the children of God," 
must not be watered down to a subjective infer- 
ence. It is a direct and conclusive evidence of 
our filial relation to God. And thus is the 
saying of Richter verified: "We arrive at the 
knowledge of the Infinite by wings, not by 
steps." We feel God near before we hear his 
voice. We feel the touch of his hand, the draw- 
ing of his love, the effluence of his power, before 
we have learned to syllable his name. 

A beautiful illustration of the inward witness 
of the heart to the presence of God is afforded in 
the case of a soldier who was severely wounded 
in one of the battles of the war of the Rebellion. 
As he lay at death's door, his mother hastened 
from her Northern home, and arriving at the hos- 
pital desired to be taken to him at once. She 



* Freely translated by Luther, " clear Father." 



THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 85 

was informed that he was sleeping, and that it 
would not be best to disturb him. She was 
allowed however to go to his couch and take the 
place of the nurse who sat by his side with her 
hand upon his feverish brow. But hardly had 
the mother's hand touched his forehead when 
the patient's eyes opened, and he started up in 
great excitement. "Whose hand was that?" 
he asked. " That felt like my mother's hand ; 
bring a light and let me see my mother's face ! " * 
When the hand of God touches us shall we, even 
in the darkness of our ignorance and sin not 
know it ? Will there be nothing in the nature 
of that touch to bring the conviction that the 
unseen friend who is bending over us, is our lov- 
ing, Heavenly Father ? 

This immediacy of contact, this impact of the 
divine upon the human, this outflowing of the 
divine into the human, is made possible because 
of oneness of relationship and nature. When 
the divine within man calls to the divine without 
him, what is it but the child calling to the 
Father ? And when the divine without him 
calls to the divine within him what is it but the 
Father calling to the child ? 

Between man and his divine environment there 
is the same wondrous correlation, the same wise 

* The Homiletical Review, Vol. IX. p. 90. 



86 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

adjustment, that there is between man and his 
earthly environment. The eye and light, the ear 
and sound are not more manifestly correlated to 
each other than are man and God. Man has evi- 
dently been made for God — made, in other words, 
for his spiritual environment. All the roots of his 
existence are in God. A sense of utter and 
absolute dependence upon a higher power is the 
deepest feeling of his nature. In this feeling of 
dependence is found the vital norm of faith, the 
common source of religious life. Even Herbert 
Spencer, the prophet of the Unknowable, finds 
himself compelled at last to fall back upon the 
belief in " the omnipresence of something which 
passes comprehension." * The omnipresent 
" something " which passes comprehension is the 
omnipresent God, the great underlying support of 
all things. The inborn feeling of dependence, 
from which it is impossible for man to free him- 
self, implies the existence of something objective 
upon which man can stay himself, something 
upon which in his conscious weakness he can 
securely lean. The principle of dualism which 
gives to every appetite appropriate objects of 
gratification ; to every mental faculty appropriate 
external objects upon which to exercise itself, 
gives to the religious feeling its appropriate 

* First Principles, p. 45. 



THE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. %J 

object of satisfaction and support. Objective 
supply is correlated to subjective want, as food 
to hunger, or as water to thirst. In his deepest 
need man is not mocked. As the complement of 
his creature insufficiency he finds divine all- 
sufficiency; as the complement of his weakness 
he finds almighty strength, as the complement 
of his darkness he finds everlasting light ; and as 
the complement of his hunger of heart he finds 
eternal love. 

" God's greatness flows around his incompleteness, 
And round his restlessness His rest." * 

Belief in a divine environing presence brings 
with it a sense of infinite and present helpfulness. 
If the earthly environment of man is at times 
more of a hindrance than a help in the attain- 
ment of moral ends, his heavenly environment, 
which encloses the earthly environment as a 
large circle encloses a smaller one, counteracts 
every evil, earth-born tendency ; so that instead 
of being the creature of circumstances, he may 
by the help of heaven make the most stubbornly 
opposing circumstances " ministers of his to do 
his pleasure." " Heaven lies about us in our 
infancy," the poet has said. He might with 
equal truth, have said, Heaven lies about us 
always. " The Lord is never far from every one 

* Mrs. Browning. 



88 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

of us." Although he sometimes " hideth himself 
on the right hand that we cannot see him," he is 
in reality near. A realizing sense of his nearness 
may not be always enjoyed, but the soul that has 
learned to walk by faith when feeling fails, falling 
back upon the absolute truth of his abiding pres- 
ence, can pass through the darkness and danger 
of the valley of deathshade, exultantly exclaim- 
ing, " I will fear no evil, for thou art with me" 

" Life," says Browning, " is just our chance of 
the prize of finding love." In a higher sense it 
is the chance of the prize of finding God. And 
whoever finds God finds love also ; for " God is 
love." Destitute of the power of self-subsistence 
the heart of man is nourished by a constant 
efflux from the great primal source of love — the 
heart of the Infinite. Driven out of himself in 
search of an objective source of succor, by the 
painful consciousness that in himself he has no 
resources, man finds no rest, until his inner ear 
catches in " the sound of a going in the tops of 
the mulberry trees," the movements of a higher 
power that is hastening to his assistance. Then 
his fears are instantly quelled, his strength is re- 
vived, and with undaunted heart he stands ready 
to meet the conflicts of life, sustained by the 
hope that the mighty power by which he is 
girded and guided will not fail him in the great- 
est emergencies. 



I HE HIGHER ENVIRONMENT. 89 

Living with God and in God, is the secret of life. 
There is hope for man only as he keeps in con- 
nection with God. Cut off from God, the spirit- 
ual nature of man withers and dies. " As the 
branch cannot bring forth fruit of itself except it 
abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye 
abide in me," says Christ, the manifested God. 
Again he says, " Aparc from me ye can do noth- 
ing." Alas, for him who will not go out of him- 
self to Christ for power to overcome the evils of 
his earthly environment, but withdraws within 
himself, refusing in his pride and self-sufficiency 
to avail himself of the inspiring, purifying, and 
ennobling influences which have been thrown 
around him, and made available for his redemp- 
tion. But happy the man who can say with 
Jacob Boehme ; " The element of the bird 
is the air ; the element of the fish is the water, 
the element of the salamander is the fire, and the 
heart of God is my element." Man was made 
for God as the ship is made for the sea, and 
when he is separated from God — like a stranded 
ship lying high and dry upon the beach, rotting 
in the sun — he is out of his native element. 
Abiding in God he not only lives, but moves ; he 
makes progress in the highest things, being 
borne on by the power of God to the glorious 
destiny for which he was created. 

Eternal life being therefore possible only by 



go UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

vital union between man and his divine environ- 
ment, let good heed be given to the injunction : 
" Keep yourselves in the love of God — " which 
means, Keep yourselves in your proper environ- 
ment. Live in the divine love as an atmos- 
phere ; bathe in it as an ocean ; root yourselves in 
it as the soil of your being ; stand under its rays 
and let it soak into your spiritual nature, until 
every fibre thrills with the fullness of holy 
energy ! 



VIII. 

THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE DIVINE 
PURPOSE OF REDEMPTION. 



" God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf. 
To Him man's dearer than to himself." 

Ben Jonson. 

" Heaven penetrates to the depths of all hearts as daybreak 
illumines the darkest room." — Confucius. 

" God's creatures each through some little narrow slit, and in 
the measure of their capacity, get a straggling beam from him 
into their being." — A. McLaren. 



VIII. 

THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE DIVINE PURPOSE 
OF REDEMPTION. 

In the unity of God the universality of the 
eternal purpose of grace is necessarily involved. 
There is one God who holds to all men the same 
relation, therefore there is one purpose of grace 
which bears alike upon all. Each one of his 
earth-born children is to the All-Father equally 
dear ; for each he has a place in his infinite 
heart ; to each he has given, in Christ, sufficiency 
of grace to enable him to meet every moral 
demand. This is the argument of Paul when he 
says; — "God willeth that all men should be 
saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth ; 
for there is one God, one mediator also between 
God and men, himself man, Jesus Christ, who gave 
himself a ransom for all." * One God, one 
Christ, and therefore one purpose regarding all 
men, and that one purpose that all should be 
saved. From the doctrine of the divine unity 



94 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

light flashes forth upon some of the darkest por- 
tions of man's moral pathway, and enables him 
to walk with certain steps where before his feet 
had stumbled. However unequally spiritual 
favors may seem to be distributed, however un- 
equal the number of talents, or the measure of 
opportunity and light given to each, through 
every life there runs the golden thread of a gra- 
cious purpose. In all the arrangements of life the 
accomplishment of that purpose is made the 
primal object. God seeks first, for every man, 
his kingdom and righteousness, and other things 
are added or subtracted as the furtherance of the 
spirit-life may demand. 

Man is not a friendless orphan in a forlorn 
world. Life is not a game of chance in which 
one happens to draw a prize, and another a 
blank ; much less is it a game of the gods in which 
the iron hand of Fate, with men for pawns, un- 
erringly works out the end decreed of heaven. 
Because embraced in the purpose of eternal love, 
endless possibilities lie enclosed in every life, the 
development of which no alien power can for- 
ever prevent. With infinite goodness behind it, 
the possibility of limitless progress within it, 
life at its worst is worth having — worth living. 
In itself of God's gifts the goodliest, of Heaven's 
boons the best, its value is enhanced by what it 



UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. 95 

may be made when redeemed and beautified by 
the grace of Christ. 

By the one mediator, Jesus Christ, the univer- 
sal purpose of the one God in the creation of man 
is brought to fulfillment. Hidden from created 
sight, dwelling not in darkness impenetrable, but 
in lieht that is inaccessible, God manifests him- 
self mediately, through Christ ; carries out his 
purposes through Christ. When he would create 
or save a world, it is done through Christ. 
Whatever dealings he has with man, or man with 
him, are carried on through Christ. Standing in 
union with God and man, Christ the God-man 
forms the golden link that binds them together. 
Nor does his mediatorship express a temporary 
but an eternal relation. It was not something 
begun with his incarnation. His incarnation was 
merely the self-revelation of his abiding presence 
as the Mediating Word through whom God had 
been continually manifesting himself to human- 
ity, through whom he had continually been act- 
ing upon humanity, and through whom he had 
unweariedly been seeking to bring humanity into 
abiding union with himself. 

The mediation of Jesus Christ culminates in 
redemption, that through redemption the end of 
creation might be realized. The one mediator " is 
the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom 
for all." Because of his essential oneness with 



96 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

the race to which he joined himself, his life inter- 
blends with every other life. From him as the 
Head of humanity blessing descends to every 
member. A representative man, he is also the 
representative of man. He acts in and through 
the race ; he acts also for the race. What he does 
in humanity he does for humanity. When he 
dies a world dies ; when he rises from the dead, a 
world is made alive. In becoming man he comes 
under the law in order that he might break its 
destroying power, and redeem those who were 
under its curse. Holding his erring brethren in 
the close embrace of his love, he goes down with 
them into the depths of death, coming under the 
utmost malediction of their offense that he might 
ransom them from the power of iniquity, and 
bring them up, by the way of repentance, into a 
life of fellowship with Heaven, upon which can 
rest no shadow of condemnation. Through the 
power of suffering, sacrificing love as revealed in 
his cross, the power of evil which had gotten hold 
of man is checked, the poison of sin is neutral- 
ized, spiritual death is arrested, conscious union 
with God is effected, and man is saved. 

That no man can enjoy an adequate probation 
apart from Christ is a foregone conclusion. 
Only by denying the present universality of the 
operations of Christ's redemption can it be made 
to appear reasonable and right that probation 



UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. g? 

should, in any case be continued under more fa- 
vorable conditions beyond the grave. But the real 
point at issue is whether all men are not now en- 
joying an adequate probation under a system of 
grace ; whether this present life, because of the 
place which Christ occupies in it, as the light and 
the life of men, does not, even in its lowest stages 
of development, afford to every man an adequate 
moral education, and therefore an adequate 
moral test ; and whether to any one it ever 
ceases to be a condition of moral training — pass- 
ing from trial to doom, from grace to fate, so that 
now and here there may be a great gulf fixed 
which no bridge of hope can span. With Christ 
in it, life is full of glorious possibilities to all ; 
with Christ left out of it, life would be shorn of 
everything that could make it a sufficient pro- 
bation to any. It is the connection of Christ 
with life that alone renders it spiritually decisive. 
It is the present gracious relation of Christ to 
men that forms the ground of his future judicial 
authority over them. He meets every man as 
Saviour before meeting him as Judge. 

Nothing could be further from the teaching of 
Scripture than the assumption that " punishment 
can be justly inflicted on sinners outside of a 
Christocentric system of probation." * What kind 

* My Study, A. Phelps, p. 81. 



98 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

of a probation save that which is Christccentric 
can be sufficient unto the needs of fallen man ? 
There are not two systems of moral trial ; one 
which has Christ for its center, and one in which 
Christ has neither part nor lot. To all men Christ 
sustains the same relations ; to all men the saving 
influences of his atonement extends. He is the 
light which lighteth every man coming into the 
world. The light of nature, the light of reason 
and of conscience, the light of revelation — are all 
from him. Coming from the same source they 
fulfil in different measures the same blessed end. 
Redeemed by the one atoning sacrifice all men 
are under one and the same system of grace, 
and their degrees of responsibility and guilt cor- 
respond with their degrees of privilege and 
knowledge. In the sublime fact that in every 
life abounding sin is met and matched with 
superabounding grace is found the only true 
theodicy. 

Happily it has come to pass that in the uni- 
versality of the purpose of God as expressed in 
the person and work of Christ, the solution of 
the great and grave problem of life and des- 
tiny is being hopefully sought. There is a 
growing conviction that here if anywhere light 
is to be found. At the same time there is, even 
on the part of those who have found out the 
true starting-point, a strange reluctance to accept 



UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. 99 

all that is involved in the universal relation of 
Christ to man, as brother, friend and Saviour. 
With many, the chief point of difficulty — the 
point at which the universality of the divine 
purpose of redemption seems to fall short — the 
point at which the universality of the atonement 
seems to evaporate — is not the obvious limitation 
of the saving benefits, but the still more obvious 
limitation of the saving knowledge of the atone- 
ment. It is asked : — What good has the atone- 
ment of Christ done for those who lived before 
his coming? What benefit does it confer upon 
those who occupy the vast outlying circles be- 
yond the sphere of Scripture illumination? " Can 
it be considered as universal if a. large portion of 
the race know nothing of the historical Christ 
and the redemption that is in him?"* These 
questions assume that the knowledge of Christ 
as historically revealed is necessary to salvation ; 
or in other words, that only one form of knowl- 
edge is saving. An unwarrantable assumption ! 
Nowhere do the Scriptures restrict salvation to 
those who are fortunate enough to possess the 
biography of Jesus the Christ ; nowhere do they 
confine the saving power of Christ within certain 
geographical limits, or within certain boundaries 
of time ; nowhere do they drive us by their teach- 

* Progressive Orthodoxy, p. 63, 



IOO UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

ings, in spite of the protests of the heart, to the 
inexorable conclusion that the vast majority of 
the race from no fault of their own have been 
lost ; and nowhere do they make the least 
acknowledgment of failure on the part of the 
present system of grace to reach every man with 
redeeming power, or acknowledge any necessity 
for indemnifying the failure of the present by 
lengthening probation into the future. The aim 
of the Bible is not to tell to men the seven-sealed 
secrets of the future, but to make known to them 
the glorious possibilities of the present. It is 
with "the life that now is" that the revelation 
of God in his Word is mainly concerned. 
Knowledge of the future is largely inferential, 
knowledge of the present is positive and real. 
Whatever the future may bring, — and that we 
can well afford to leave with the all-loving One 
— the present is a day of grace, a day filled to 
the brim with redeeming influences, a day in 
which the attainment of a redeemed manhood 
is possible in every life. 

It is no wonder, when the present plan of God 
to save men is made out to be an egregious fail- 
ure, that short and summary methods are sug- 
gested by which the deficiencies and failure of 
the present may be supplemented in the world to 
come. But, is the present plan a failure? Has 
Christ died for any man in vain so far as being 



UNIVERSALITY OF DIVINE PURPOSE. lOI 

able to save him in this life ? Is redeeming love 
ever fettered so that it cannot move when strug- 
gling souls cry aloud for help ? Has life, in mul- 
titudes of instances to run to its fateful end in 
an unhindered course of evil, with an impotent 
Christ looking on? Is this world to which the 
Son of God descended — this world upon which, 
and for which he shed his precious blood, the 
theatre of Redemption's unfinished and unsuc- 
cessful plot ? Is it the Thermopylae of the uni- 
verse at which the Heavenly powers of light and 
love have fought their best, but have fallen de- 
feated, although crowned with glory and honor? 
No ! here has been the scene of Heaven's grand- 
est triumph! Here hell has been vanquished! 
Here the Cross has been lifted up, the symbol 
not of defeat, but of victory ! 

True, Heaven's purpose of redemption is not 
yet completed ; but its final realization is fully 
assured. By the widening knowledge of the 
gospel it is being progressively unfolded, increas- 
ingly realized. At no point, however, does it 
fail to reach its destined end. The help that 
man needs is not postponed into the future, but 
is ministered to him as he needs it. Christ is 
always a present Saviour ; to-day is always the 
day of salvation ; the present is always spirit- 
ually decisive. 



IX. 

THE FORTHPUTTING OF REDEMP- 
TIVE EFFORT A NECESSITY OF THE 
DIVINE NATURE. 



" O Lord, if thou wert needy as I, 
If thou shouldst come to my door as I to thine, 
If thou hungered so much as I 
For that which belongs to the spirit, 
For that which is fine and good, — 
I would give it to thee if I had the power." 

From an outline sketch by Sidney Lanier. 

"Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde; 
Hae mercy on my soul, Lord God, 
As I wad do, were I Lord God, 
And ye were Martin Elginbrodde." 

An epitaph by Geo. Macdonald. 

" Though man sits still and takes his ease, 
God is at work on man, 
No means, no moment unemployed 
To bless him if he can." 

Dr. Young. 



IX. 

THE FORTHPUTTING OF REDEMPTIVE EFFORT 
A NECESSITY OF THE DIVINE NATURE. 

It is a cold view of life that represents it as a 
probation, with God standing over man com- 
manding him to walk on the sharp edge of moral 
obligation, looking on to see if he keeps his bal- 
ance, rewarding him if he succeeds, and punish- 
ing him if he falls or falters. Probation is merely 
an incident of life, and not its distinguishing 
feature. Life is a preliminary term of moral 
education and discipline. The primary object 
for which man is put into the school of life is not 
that he might be tested, but that he might be 
trained. God himself directs the moral educa- 
tion of all his children, and watches its result with 
the deepest parental solicitude. When he sees 
any one endeavoring to walk in the steep and 
slippery path of righteousness in spite of numer- 
ous stumblings, his gentle voice whispers encour- 
agement, and his tender hand is outstretched to 
uphold and guide the wavering, tottering feet. 
" As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over 



106 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh 
them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord 
doth lead us."* With the repeated experiments 
and failures of his children the Heavenly Father 
is very patient. When faint and ready to perish 
they are upborne on the broad wings of his love 
and power. Their necessity is their plea for 
help, and the direr their necessity, the stronger 
their plea. " Pardon mine iniquity, for it is 
great" is with God an all prevailing argument. 
The very helplessness of man is to God sufficient 
reason why he should stand by him, and render 
him all possible assistance. 

As a sinner, man is "without strength." He 
cannot stand upright, and walk in the way of the 
divine commandments. And when out of his 
distress he looks up into the divine face, and 
says, half in doubt and half in faith, " If thou 
canst do anything for me, have compassion on 
me and help me," can we think that God would 
be doing the right thing by him to leave him 
unaided? The claim that misery has upon sym- 
pathy, the claim that weakness has upon 
strength, demands that a helping hand be 
reached down from heaven to every feeble mor- 
tal, in his oft-renewed struggles to be freed from 
sin, and to live a pure and righteous life. 

* Dent, xxxii. n, 12. 



REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. ICJ 

From his very nature, God must pity man in 
his disabled condition, and make every possible 
effort for his redemption. Necessity is laid upon 
him to stir up his strength on man's behalf, — not 
the necessity of fate, but the necessity which a 
heart of infinite love is under to seek relief in the 
impartation of benefits ; the necessity of a holy 
nature to find delight in doing good, — the same 
necessity which a true mother feels, when, im- 
pelled by love she rushes into a burning house, and 
risks her life in order to save the lives of her 
children. We pay God a poor compliment, when 
pushing to an unwarrantable extreme the doc- 
trine of his absolute sovereignty, we claim for 
him the right to do wrong, by claiming for him 
the right to pass by some of his hapless children, 
and to select others as objects of special favor, 
and of effectual help. Does partiality cease to 
be sinful only by being attributed to the Heav- 
enly Father ? 

Against the doctrine of partial love the heart 
lifts up its protest, and as sentiment ultimately 
gets the better of logic, a doctrine against which 
the heart protests has upon it the seal of doom. 
No theory of bare sovereignty can command for 
ever the homage of men. The spirit of man will 
bow before the scepter of sovereign power only 
when it is seen that the Almighty and the All- 
Good are one. God is loved because he is seen 



108 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

to be lovesome ; he is obeyed because his com- 
mands are known to be just and right. 

For everything that God does we may be sure 
that he has a good and sufficient reason to give, 
although that reason may be often hid from us. 
" Our God is in the heavens and he hath done 
whatsoever he hath pleased ; " but it is not pos- 
sible that he should ever be pleased to do wrong. 
In all his actions infinite love is directed by 
infinite reason. In his infinite reason he finds 
the eternal law of righteousness, which were he 
to violate, he would cease to be God. 

The meanest creature that breathes has rights 
which God as the great Head of the universe is 
bound to respect. Man in virtue of special rela- 
tionship to God has special claims upon him. If 
Creatorship has its responsibilities, much more 
has Fatherhood. As the universal Father of men 
God is bound to seek a*s the ultimate end of the 
order of things which he has established in the 
world, the highest welfare of his entire human 
family. As the Father of disobedient and rebel- 
lious children, he must from his very nature do 
all that is reasonable and right to reconcile them 
to himself, and thus to restore harmony among 
themselves. One would think that this ought to 
be accepted as self-obvious. And yet, in the 
present year of grace a modern theologian, " as 
one born out of due time," is found contending 



REDEMPTIVE EEEORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. IOQ 

that God owes nothing to his children ; and 
declaring that " the assertion that God is bound 
either in this life or in the next, to tender pardon 
of sin to every man has not only no support in 
Scripture, but is contrary to reason." * What ! 
is the obligation of any moral being to be merci- 
ful contrary to Scripture and to reason ? Is it 
only the earthly father who finds in the impera- 
tive demands of his parental nature a law which 
binds him to keep open door for the penitent 
prodigal ? Does not the charge of partiality 
implied in these words put a stain upon the 
divine perfections, by making the thoughts and 
ways of God seem lower instead of higher than 
the thoughts and ways of man ? In view of the 
fact that " the love of God is broader than the 
measure of man's mind," it is perhaps only nat- 
ural that man should generally err by narrowing 
that which seems to him too great. Man is 
himself so small that his largest thought may be 
a belittling of the Infinite. Of one thing, how- 
ever, we may feel confident : whenever God is 
made to appear arbitrary and partial his character 
is travestied ; whenever his ways are represented 
as unequal, they are misrepresented. Infinitely 
great and good, the Heavenly Father has but to 
be known to be revered and loved. His purpose 

* Dogmatic Theology, Dr. Shedd, Vol. I. p. 426. 



I IO UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

of grace concerning humanity, evolved in history, 
revealed in Scripture, and brought to completion 
in Christ has but to be understood, to fill and 
thrill the heart with adoring joy, and to satisfy 
every man that he is not being dealt with un- 
fairly; but that whatever be the outward condi- 
tions of his life, the prize of the high calling of 
God in Christ Jesus has been placed within his 
reach. 

Shut the door of moral opportunity and possi- 
bility, and moral responsibility is gone. Can 
man be held responsible for repentance if he is 
not called to repentance ? Can he be held 
responsible for remaining unforgiven if no tender 
of pardon has been made to him ? Can he be 
held responsible for a righteous life if grace suffi- 
cient for the mastery of evil and for the attain- 
ment of righteousness be withheld ? For God to 
demand repentance without the offer of pardon ; 
for him to demand a righteous life without sup- 
plying the conditions necessary to its production 
would be to out-Pharaoh Pharaoh. It would be 
like demanding bricks not only without straw, 
but without clay. 

Look at men in the mass ! Brought into ex- 
istence without their own consent ; planted in the 
midst of untoward conditions which they would 
never have chosen ; surrounded with seductive 
temptations ; cursed with inherited evil tenden- 



REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. I I I 

cies ; entangled in a network of unfavorable cir- 
cumstances, the pursuit of moral goodness must 
always be made under great difficulties. Every 
attempt to walk in the path of righteousness is 
like "toiling in immeasurable sand"; and unless 
there intervene a power sufficient for their deliv- 
erance, deeper and deeper their feet must sink 
until they become entombed where they had 
hoped to find a path of safety. With no divine 
hand upon the helm, the fairest work of God 
must drift to helpless wreck upon the ragged 
rocks of sin. 

But not if God can prevent it will such a catas- 
trophe ever happen. Man has cost too much 
already, his intrinsic worth is too great for his 
Maker to allow him to perish without exhausting 
every expedient to save him. Nothing that can 
righteously be done to save him from ruin and to 
secure his highest weal, has been left undone. 
Every human right has been respected ; every 
divine responsibility has been met. God is " a 
righteous Father," " a faithful Creator." He deals 
justly by every man ; yea more, he deals gener- 
ously — mercifully. He is " a just God, and a 
Saviour" * 

In the matter of salvation, God has satisfied 
his own sense of justice. He has been true to 

* Isaiah xlv, 21, 



112 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

himself. His treatment of man is regarded 
with supreme self-approval because in every- 
thing the law of love has been fulfilled. The 
sacrifice of Christ was not a satisfaction to 
divine justice ; it was not the reconciliation of 
warring attributes in the Godhead ; but the rec- 
onciliation of rebel man to God. Among the 
divine attributes there was no schism. No per- 
sonal anger existed on the part of God towards 
man. Nor did he cause vengeance to fall upon 
an innocent head, that he might be pacified 
towards those upon whose heads the stroke 
ought to have fallen. The atonement originated 
in God, and was the outward expression of an 
eternal element in his nature. It was the proof, 
not the purchase, of his love — a revelation to the 
universe of his inmost heart. Questions of gov- 
ernment were involved in man's redemption. 
God himself required atonement. As the merci- 
ful Father of men he stood ready to forgive 
personal offense ; but the honor of the law, and 
the imperilled interests of others demanded that 
the brand of his abhorrence be put upon sin, so 
that he might be acknowledged to be just in 
forgiving the ungodly. With his beloved Son 
God was well pleased, because by the sacrifice of 
himself which he so freely rendered, he paid to 
the uttermost farthing the debt of divine justice. 
The sacrifice of Christ instead of being a satis- 



REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. 113 

faction to divine justice was a satisfaction of 
divine justice. But it was more, — infinitely more 
than that. It goes far beyond all considerations 
of bare justice ; exhibiting as nothing else can 
do the length, and breadth, and height, and 
depth of sovereign mercy. To the mercy which 
it reveals sinful man can lay no just claim, for 
mercy always implies the absence of merit. 
From beginning to end salvation is of grace. 
Even-handed justice did not demand that God 
should go as far as he has done. It was enough 
that man have a free field and no favor, that he 
be placed upon a footing of law, with all hinder- 
ances removed, but with no balance in his favor. 
God has done all that could reasonably have 
been expected of him ; yea, he has done " exceed- 
ing abundantly" above all that man in the 
urgency of his need, or in the boldness of his 
thought could ask or think. The superabun- 
dance of the provisions of divine grace for the 
salvation of man, is the surprise of the universe. 
Such wealth of favor as has been shown to man 
cannot be claimed as a debt, but ought to be 
received as a gift most precious. Calvary's sacri- 
fice reveals not man's deservings, but the neces- 
sity of the divine nature to overflow in great and 
gracious deeds. Love like God's could find 
fitting expression in nothing less than in the 
giving up of its dearest treasure. And so the 
8 



1 14 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

poor Indian woman touched the deepest philos- 
ophy of redemption when she said of God's love- 
gift to the world — " It was just like him." 

The sacrifice of Christ is also designed to 
satisfy the sense of justice in all created intelli- 
gence. It is God's answer to man's demurrings 
when mercy is shown to the erring. It is God's 
vindication of himself in giving the penny to the 
eleventh hour laborer. In the atonement of 
Christ the Father goes out and reasons with the 
elder son, who, smarting under a sense of injus- 
tice, refuses to enter into the Father's joy over 
the home-coming of the prodigal. That the 
elder son fails to acquiesce in God's treatment of 
the sinful ; that he fails to be reasoned out of the 
narrow idea that mercy is incompatible with 
justice, is no proof that the divine argument is 
not satisfactory, but is proof rather of the slow- 
ness of man to take in the highest lesson of 
divine wisdom, and so to rest satisfied with that 
which satisfies God. 

With a love that stoops to conquer, God 
makes his appeal to the bar of human reason. 
He asks man to consider whether in all his deal- 
ings towards him, he has not conformed to the 
highest principles of right. " Are not my ways 
equal? saith the Lord." He goes still farther. 
Appealing to the deepest instincts of parental affec- 
tion he asks, " What more could I have done?" 



REDEMPTIVE EFFORT A DIVINE NECESSITY. 115 

what farther effort could I have put forth? 
what greater sacrifice could I have made ? There 
are times when every man is made to feel and 
acknowledge, " God has done the fair thing, the 
best thing by me ; in all his dealings with me he 
has been guided by the golden law of love ; if I 
am lost the fault will be mine, and not his." 
Our guarantee that the Judge of all the earth 
will do right by every one at last, is that he is 
doing right by every one now. 

Moral probation is thus related not to law, but 
to grace. The sinful condition of any man does 
not render his salvation impossible. Theorize as 
we may about the nature of the atonement, the fact 
of the atonement remains. The question of sin 
has been settled, so that the number or the enor- 
mity of sins forms no obstacle in the way of 
salvation. The whole race has been placed upon 
a new footing — a footing of mercy. Men are 
condemned not because they are sinners, but 
because they are unrepentant, unbelieving, diso- 
bedient sinners. Souls perish in the darkness 
and bondage of sin, not because the prison doors 
are closed upon them, but because they refuse to 
pass through the open door into the sunlight 
and liberty, to which all men are called in Christ 
Jesus. 



X. 

THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR 
OF MERCY. 



" Bad are those men who speak evil of the good." 

— H. T. Riley. 

" Whoever sins against light kisses the lips of a blazing cannon. 

—Jeremy Taylor. 

"Try what repentance can ; what can it not? 
Yet what can it when one cannot repent ? 
O wretched state ! O bosom black as death 1 
O limed soul, that struggling to be free 
Art more engaged ! " 

Shakespeare. 

" But once Immanuel's orphan cry the universe hath shaken ; 
It went up single, echoless, ' My God, I am forsaken ! ' 
It went up from the Holy's lips, amid his lost creation, 
That, of the lost, no son should use these words of desolation." 

Mrs. Browning. 



X. 

THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR OF MERCY. 

If there exists a universal purpose of grace, it 
is plain that there exist also obstructions to its 
development and complete fulfillment. On what 
side are these obstructions to be found? On the 
divine side, or on the human side? Assuredly 
on the latter. The Holy One of Israel is limited 
by human unbelief, and by the refusal of man to 
co-operate with his gracious operations. Were 
the accomplishment of the divine purpose solely 
a question of almighty power, its solution would 
be simple and easy. Moral transformation can- 
not, however, be effected by the touch of God's 
creative finger. God does not deal with moral 
beings as he deals with inert matter. Moral per- 
sonality is in his sight a sacred thing, and it never 
suffers violence at his hands. All things are gov- 
erned according to their nature ; moral beings 
by moral laws, and physical objects by physical 
laws. When, therefore, scientific terminology is 
taken to describe spiritual things, correspondence 
must not be mistaken for identity ; meta- 



120 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

phor must not be exalted into argument ; parable 
must not be translated into literal matter of fact 
detail. Points of comparison there undoubtedly 
are between things spiritual and things material, 
but they belong to different kingdoms, and are 
under the operation of different laws. Moral 
beings are not under the law of necessity which 
holds sway over the world of matter. They can 
surrender to or resist the working of divine power. 
Any change wrought in them is not a mechani- 
cal thing, accomplished by a power " from with- 
out which seizes upon them and regenerates 
them." Moral change is always conscious and 
voluntary ; conscious because man is an intelli- 
gent being, voluntary because he is a moral being. 
While then it is true that in the natural world 
" the door from the inorganic to the organic is 
shut and no mineral can open it," it is not true that 
"the door from the natural to the spiritual is 
shut and no man can open it."* In the tender 
appeal : " Behold I stand at the door and knock ; 
if any man will hear my voice and open the door I 
will come in," salvation is made to hang upon the 
fateful "IF" of human choice. The entire freedom 
of the mind in the act of faith is often strangely 
ignored. Power to accept God's testimony 
implies power to reject it ; power to obey God 

* Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Drummond, p. 71. 



THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 2 1 

implies power to disobey him ; power to fulfil 
his will implies power to thwart it. The reason 
why God fails in any case to accomplish his 
purpose of grace is not found in the insuffi- 
ciency of power at his command, but in the 
unplastic character of the material with which 
he has to work. Opposition to God is the es- 
sence of all sin; persistent opposition to God 
is the culmination of sin ; it is the sin, the only 
sin, which shuts upon sinful man the door of 
mercy. 

There are three distinct aspects in which this 
death-dealing sin is set forth in the Scriptures. 
These we shall now proceed to take up in order ; 
endeavoring, if possible, to cut a pathway 
through the tangled thicket of human specula- 
tion, in order to catch a glimpse of the sunlight 
of divine truth. 

THE UNPARDONED SIN. 

" Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto man ; but 
the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And 
whosoever shall speak a word against the Holy Spirit, it shall 
not be forgiven him ; neither in this world, nor in that which is 
to come." — Matt. xii. 31, 32. Compare Mark iii. 28. 29, Luke 
xii. 10. 

In Luke's gospel, the sin against the Son of 
Man is sharply distinguished from the sin against 
the Holy Ghost. " Every one who shall speak 



122 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

a word against the Son of Man it shall be for- 
given him, but unto him that blasphemeth 
against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven." 
What is the point of difference between the sin 
of speaking against the Son of Man, and the sin 
of speaking against the Holy Spirit? Why is it 
a worse offense in the sight of Heaven to sin 
against the vicar or substitute of Christ, than to 
sin against Christ himself? What is there in the 
particular sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit 
that renders it peculiarly aggravating, and 
unavoidably fatal? The ground of distinction 
and difference is substantially this : the sin 
against the Son of Man is a sin against Christ 
historically revealed, committed in the darkness 
of ignorance ; the sin against the Holy Ghost is 
a sin against Christ as immanent in the soul, 
committed in the daylight of knowledge. As a 
sin of ignorance the sin against the Son of Man 
shall be forgiven. The Lord will not lay it to 
the charge of any soul. The mind uninstructed 
in the things of the Kingdom of God may be 
so beclouded by ignorance, the mind falsely 
instructed may be so darkened by prejudice that 
when "the true Light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world " makes his approach, 
he may not be recognized. Christ enters into 
the soul which he has made, but he is neither 
known nor welcomed. He comes unto his own 



THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. \2$ 

and his own receive him not. But he is patient 
and pitiful. He knows that there are many 
princely souls, who if they only knew him as the 
Lord of glory would cease to crucify him. Their 
sin of ignorance not being willful he mercifully 
overlooks. Some of the Jews opposed Jesus, 
doubtless because they understood him, but 
many of them opposed him because they mis- 
understood him. While firmly trusting in " the 
Hope of Israel," revealed in the Old Testament, 
and eagerly looking for his coining, they in their 
blindness rejected the actual Christ, the Messiah 
of God. The Apostle Peter when charging the 
Jews with denying " the Holy One and the Just," 
softens his accusation by saying, " I wot 
that in ignorance ye did it, as did also your 
rulers." And Jesus upon the cross prayed for 
his murderers, " Father, forgive them r for they 
know not what they do." Had they known the 
full meaning of their evil deed many of them 
would have acted differently. Knowledge is the 
measure of guilt. " To him that knoweth to do 
good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." " If ye 
were blind ye would have no sin, but now ye say 
'we see,' your sin remaineth." Sins of ignorance 
are sins because violations of law, but they are 
not treasured up against the soul who diligently 
follows the light he has. When they become 
known they bring a sense of guilt, and call for 



124 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

pardon ; therefore even under the law provision 
was made for sins committed in error. * 

From its very nature, the sin against the Holy 
Ghost, as a sin against the immanent Christ, per- 
sonally and privately revealed, cannot be a sin of 
ignorance, but must always be a sin of presump- 
tion ; hence it implies a state of heart which 
precludes the possibility of forgiveness. Not to 
welcome and accept the testimony of the Holy 
Spirit, as far as it is known, is to put one's self 
in an unpardonable condition. The Spirit comes 
to every man bringing the light of life. He 
comes to dispel the ignorance in man regarding 
God ; he comes to overcome the opposition of 
the human heart to the divine ; he comes to tes- 
tify of Christ as revealed in the word, and as 
immanent in the heart. To sin against the Holy 
Spirit by quenching his saving light, is to leave 
the soul in hopeless darkness ; it is to shut out 
the soul from the only source of saving light 
which Christ has given to men ; and thus to 
reach a state of willful ignorance and unbelief 
which God cannot overlook. " Thus have they 
loved to wander, they have not refrained their 
feet, therefore the Lord doth not accept them."f 
" A man may be guilty of many offenses against 
the Son of Man, without the rupture of his cove- 

* See Lev. iv. 13, 14. t Jer- xiv. 10. 



THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 12$ 

nant relation ; but when his sin runs up into blas- 
phemy against the inward light of the Holy Spirit, 
he breaks out of the circle of forgiveness and 
stands upon the sinner's ground, unforgiven, yea, 
condemned in the sight of heaven." * 

Augustine held that the " unpardonable sin," 
is persisted-in unbelief, or final impenitence. 
With this agrees the whole tenor of Scripture. 
" He that believeth not shall be condemned." 
A latent condition is implied. He that believ- 
eth not shall be condemned, if he continue in 
unbelief. And he that sins against the Holy 
Spirit shall never be forgiven so long as he 
continues in an unyielding, unrepentant state. 
Athanasius remarks, " It deserves to be noted 
that Christ did not say, to him that blasphemeth 
and repenteth it shall be forgiven, but to him 
that blasphemes, that is, who perseveres in blas- 
phemy," " for there is no sin," he adds, " which 
God will not pardon to them who sincerely and 
worthily repent." So then, instead of saying 
with Dorner that the declaration of Christ that 
the sin against the Holy Spirit hath no forgive- 
ness "does not necessarily exclude deliverance 
through punishment," we would say that it 
does not necessarily exclude deliverance through 
repentance. Olshausen suggests that " this pas- 

* A. Brown, in The Evangelical Repository, June, i8;q. 



126 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

sage is not overstrained if we infer that all other 
sins can be forgiven in the world to come, always 
supposing repentance and faith." But, suppos- 
ing repentance and faith, why may not this sin 
also be forgiven in the world to come? 

The stages through which a soul passes into 
this direful state are easily taken. Indifference is 
followed by cavilling, cavilling leads to irrever- 
ence, irreverence changes to scorn, scorn deep- 
ens to blasphemy. Whether this sin be sharp 
and sudden, or whether it be the last act in a 
long process of disobedience, in essence it is 
always the same ; it is sin committed against 
light ; it is sin against conviction. An insincere 
heart will reject the truth ; an honest heart will 
respond to the truth. " Every one," says Jesus, 
"who is of the truth heareth my voice." Igno- 
rant opposition to Christ does not necessarily 
show a rebellious heart, opposition to the Holy 
Spirit always does. A controversy, a collision 
takes place between the Spirit of God and the 
spirit of man. The divine love is grieved, the 
divine reason is withstood, the divine light is 
quenched. The climax of human sin is at length 
reached, when as Calvin expresses it, " contempt 
is poured knowingly and willingly upon the 
Spirit of God." 

We can now see why we are not to pray for 
this sin. It is "a sin unto death," a damning 



THE SW THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 12/ 

sin, the only damning sin. Would it be becoming 
to ask God to forgive the impenitent? To pray 
that the impenitent may be led to repentance 
would be a proper prayer, but no pious soul asks 
God to forgive those who persistently refuse to 
yield to the sweet influences of his Spirit. 
Prayer is to be restrained in the presence of this 
sin not because there is a limit to the saving mercy 
of God ; not because an ultimate moral state has 
been reached, from which there can be no recov- 
ery ; not because there is a sin so heinous that 
the Holy Spirit turns away from the one who 
commits it, to strive with him no more; but 
because the impenitent heart is not in a con- 
dition profitably to receive forgiveness. On the 
divine side there is no bar to the salvation of any 
soul. " Him that cometh unto me," says Christ, 
"I will in no wise cast out." " There is no 
remedy, however, for the rejection of a remedy, 
no atonement for the rejection of atonement, no 
forgiveness for the rejection of forgiveness." 
Disobedience to the heavenly vision that comes 
unto every man, ends in darkness and death. 

This sin, instead of being one that is unknown 
in the present age; instead of being one that is 
seldom reached, is alarmingly common. When 
Christ is known and rejected, when the life-and- 
death message of God's word is understood and 
disregarded, the sin against the Holy Ghost is 



128 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

committed. For the scribes and Pharisees to 
ascribe the supernatural works of Christ to 
Satanic agency was to tread perilously near this 
precipice ; for them malevolently to ascribe those 
works to Satanic agency knowing better, was to 
fall over the precipice, for in such a case Christ 
would be rejected understandingly, and the 
Spirit of God contemned. 

Consider the circumstances in which Christ 
spake these words. A notable miracle had been 
wrought. Seeing how deeply the people were 
impressed, the scribes and Pharisees became 
jealous of the growing influence of Jesus. The 
great crisis to which things had been tending 
had come. The divine Spirit had taken the 
things of Christ and shown them unto those 
" blind leaders of the blind" ; so that now they 
were brought to the decisive point of either 
acknowledging the claims of Jesus as a heaven- 
sent teacher, or of openly denying his claims, 
and placing themselves in an attitude of uncom- 
promising hostility to his work. Within their 
hearts there was a struggle such as comes only 
once in the history of a human being. Over the 
mouth of an accusing conscience the unholy 
hand of restraint was placed, and the fatal choice 
was made. Instantly the heavens grew black. 
The soul was brought into condemnation. 
Whatever remnant of right feeling was left was 



THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 29 

changed into gall and wormwood. Madly at- 
tempting to justify their opposition, and to give 
if possible, a death blow to the popularity of 
Jesus, they turned to the multitude and said : 
" This fellow doth not cast out demons but by 
Beelzebub, the prince of the demons." What an 
outpouring of malice and contempt ! To hint 
that He who is Incarnate Love had any connec- 
tion with what was demoniac ; to say that He 
who is Incarnate Purity was in league with " the 
god of filth," and had himself " an unclean 
spirit ! " There is no deeper depth of blasphemy 
possible ! 

The reason why this sin is not pardoned must 
now appear evident. But here let the distinction 
be noted between a sin that is unpardoned, and 
one that is unpardonable. This sin is generally 
called "the unpardonable sin." Be it remem- 
bered, however, that the expression, " the 
unpardonable sin " is not Biblical. It is a theo- 
logical coinage, which is in some measure 
responsible for obscuring thought upon the sub- 
ject, for which it has stood as the accepted title. 
All that Scripture affirms is that the sin referred 
to " shall not be forgiven," " hath never forgive- 
ness." It is not said that it is unpardonable, but 
that it is unpardoned ; not that it cannot be 
pardoned, but that it shall not be pardoned. It 
is The UNPARDONED SIN, because it im- 
9 



130 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

plies a condition of heart which the general 
mercy of God cannot pass by — a condition of 
heart that scorns to ask for pardon. Man 
has shut and bolted the door of his Spiritual 
habitation against the entrance of God's Spirit. 
He has committed spiritual suicide. Not that 
God is unwilling to forgive the vilest sinner, but 
he is forever unwilling to forgive the impenitent 
sinner. The one thing which makes it unsafe for 
God to forgive is the inward condition of the sin- 
ner. Where there is impenitence of heart, for- 
giveness would be hurtful to the individual, and 
to the interests of the moral universe. For 
continued impenitence there is no forgiveness in 
any age, or in any world ; BUT, " Let the 
wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
his thoughts ; and let him return unto the Lord, 
and he will have mercy upon him, and to our 
God for he will abundantly pardon." 

THE IRREMEDIABLE CONDITION. 

" As touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of 
the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 
and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to 
come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again 
unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of 
God afresh, and put him to an open shame."— Heb. vi. 4-6. 

In the Gospels the sin against the Holy Ghost 
is represented as shutting the soul out from sal- 



THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 3 I 

vation ; here it is represented as keeping the 
backslidden soul from being renewed unto repen- 
tance. The central, the pivotal question is : What 
renders repentance impossible in the case here 
supposed? Is it God's unwillingness to forgive? 
No ! a thousand times, no ! Repentance is ren- 
ered impossible solely because of the unwilling- 
ness of the apostate to come into that condition 
or attitude in which repentance can have an exist- 
ence. 

Andrew Fuller grasps part of the truth when 
he says that " when the Scriptures speak of any 
sin as unpardonable \ or of the impossibility of 
those who have committed it being renewed 
again to repentance, we are not to understand 
them as expressing any natural limitation to 
either the power of God or the mercy of God, 
nor yet of the efficacy of the Saviour's blood, 
but merely of a limitation dictated by sovereign 
wisdom and righteousness." The completed 
truth is that the limitation dictated by sovereign 
wisdom and righteousness is the limitation 
which springs from man's perversity, especially 
his perversity in excluding from his mind the 
truth that makes for repentance. 

The key to unlock this text hangs on the door. 
The reason why the renewal of the evangelized 
Hebrews who should fall away was impossible, 
is given in the expression, " seeing they crucify, — 



I32 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

(that is, seeing they are crucifying, — seeing they 
continue to crucify — to themselves) the Son of 
God afresh, and put him to an open shame." 
The only insuperable bar to repentance is continu- 
ing to crucify, in the heart, the Son of God afresh. 
So long as such hostility to Christ remains, 
repentance cannot come to the birth. Before 
the truth that softens the heart can enter to do 
its blessed work, there must be a complete 
change of spiritual attitude. 

The starting-point in repentance is in the will. 
By an act of the will the mind is directed to the 
truth ; from contemplation of the truth comes a 
change of mind ; a change of mind results in a 
change of feeling ; a change of feeling issues in a 
change of purpose and life. Any one may will- 
fully refuse to see the truth, or seeing it refuse to 
follow it. The poet asks, 

" What if thine eye refuse to see, 

Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail, 
And thou a willing captive be, 
Thyself thy own dark jail ? " * 

The guiding light of truth shines in vain for 
those who turn away to wander recklessly in the 
darkness of sin ; the message of wisdom, spoken 
as with the sweet seductive voice of a charmer, 
falls in vain upon deaf ears ; the prison doors 

* Whittier. 



THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 33 

swing open in vain before the eyes of those who 
are the willing captives of evil. What can 
Heaven do for the souls that turn with averted 
face from the Christ of God ? Those that come 
to Christ come to him freely. Faith is a free 
act. Even the mighty works of Christ did not 
necessitate faith ; they could produce no force of 
conviction without the consent of the will. In 
the will lies the moral element of faith. Part of 
Paul's counsel to Timothy was this, " in meek- 
ness correcting those that oppose themselves, 
lest God should give them repentance, unto the 
knowledge of the truth." * Those who are to be 
tenderly corrected are said to oppose themselves; 
they oppose their own deepest convictions of 
truth, and promptings of duty ; they oppose 
their better selves ; and for what end ? Lest, yield- 
ing to the divine voice speaking within them, 
they should be led to repentance. To the same 
effect are the significant words: " The heart of 
this people is waxed gross, and their ears are 
dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed ; 
lest they should see with their eyes, and hear 
with their ears, and understand with their hearts, 
and should be converted, and I should heal 
them." f 

From the essential nature of man as a self-act- 



* 2 Tim. ii. 24. f Acts xxviii. 27. 



134 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

ive being, ability is postulated to cleave to Christ 
or to turn from him, ability to bow the neck to 
his scepter or to break loose from his acknowl- 
edged authority. The planets move in their 
appointed orbits by necessity; man enters the 
service of Christ and remains in it freely. He 
may disown Christ with full knowledge of what 
he is doing. In common speech it is often said 
of those who do wrong that they know better 
than they do. This is true of every deserter 
from Christ's service. He knows better than he 
does. Having been illumined with light from 
Heaven, having come under the influence of the 
Gospel, his sin of defection is peculiarly sinful. 
He sins against light ; he sins against the Holy 
Spirit, he sins against Christ as revealed by the 
Holy Spirit, knowing and acknowledging that to 
Him his love and fealty should be given. And 
what follows ? Turning away from Christ he falls 
away from righteousness. 

It is a great sorrow to have a hopeful friend- 
ship turn to ashes ; and the sorrow is deepened 
when to falseness is added ingratitude, and there 
is ground for the plaint, " Yea, mine own famil- 
iar friend, in whom I trusted, who did eat of my 
bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." The 
ingratitude and hate of those whose sins he bore, 
form the nails that pierce the sacred heart of Christ. 
Those who turn against him crucify him afresh ; 



THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 3 $ 

they enact over again, in spirit, the crucifixion 
scene. They open his wounds anew, and give him 
untold pain. Yea, more, they put him to an open 
shame; exposing him to the world's scorn. By 
leaving the circle of his followers and returning 
to the world, they virtually declare that they have 
not found in him what they expected. They 
cruelly insinuate that he has disappointed and 
deceived them. 

Any one who could continue to subject Christ 
to such treatment might not be past repentance, 
but his repentance would itself be an impossibil- 
ity so long as that spirit of resistance lasted ; for 
it is a law of mind that repentance, being condi- 
tioned not only upon an impulse from within 
but upon a moving motive from without, can be 
produced only when the objects fitted to awaken 
holy and tender emotions are contemplated. 
" Then shall they look upon me whom they 
have pierced, and mourn for him as one mourn- 
eth for his only son." Let the connection 
between looking and mourning be marked ! 
Looking leads to mourning, and looking away 
leads to the instant congealing of every feeling 
of contrition which had already begun to 
flow. Those who turn away from beholding 
the Crucified Redeemer — those who hide their 
faces from His pitiful eyes whose look of tender 
rebuke would cut the conscience to the quick, 



I36 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

must remain unmoved to repentance. Ice can- 
not give heat, nor can the heart be melted to 
repentance when bent on vain or sinful things. 
The Sun of Righteousness cannot impart warmth 
and light to those who will not leave their dun- 
geons of evil, and stand with uplifted face under 
his quickening beams. Christ, who in the case 
before us is assumed to be rejected, is the only 
object in the universe that can so affect the 
heart as to move it to godly repentance. But 
what are the beauties of Christ to one who closes 
tightly his spiritual eyes ? What power can Cal- 
vary's love possess to change for the better any 
one who persists to live as if Christ were not? 
" A light tenderer than moon or sun may shine for- 
ever on," but it cannot reach and melt the heart 
that keeps itself hooded in unbelief. As it is 
impossible to pour water into a sealed vessel; as 
it is impossible to cure disease, if the all potent 
remedy be refused ; so it is impossible for any 
one to be renewed again unto repentance who 
continues to crucify the Son of God afresh, and 
put him to an open shame. 

NO OTHER SACRIFICE. 

" If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of 
the truth, there remain eth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a cer- 
tain fearful expectation of judgment and fierceness of fire which 
shall devour the adversaries." — Heb. x. 26. 



THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 37 

Continuous sin, like continuous unbelief or 
impenitence, cuts the soul off from all part or 
lot in the salvation of Christ. " Sin when it is 
finished bringeth forth death." " If we sin (that 
is, if we continue in sin) there remaineth no more 
sacrifice for sin." Not a single act, nor any defi- 
nite number of acts of sin is indicated but a state 
of sin, the determinate choice of evil as a principle 
of life ; such a fixed condition of moral perversity 
as is expressed in the words, " Evil, be thou my 
good ! " Alford gives the sense of the passage 
when he says that it does not mean, " if we have 
willfully sinned," but, " if we be found willfully 
sinning." If at any point in our spiritual history ; 
if in this world or in that, we be found in a state 
of wilful disobedience, there remaineth no more 
sacrifice for sin. It is not said that there remain- 
eth no sacrifice for sin ; but no more sacrifice, ?io 
other sacrifice than the divinely appointed and 
divinely approved sacrifice of Calvary. If there 
be defection from Christianity, if there be a will- 
ful and deliberate severing of the soul from Christ 
and his atoning sacrifice, the only satisfactory 
ground of hope is renounced. For those who 
know the one true sacrifice for sin, and casting it 
from them turn to the beggarly elements of the 
world, no other source of relief is left. Rejecting 
Heaven's only antidote they perish in their sins. 
Abandoning the only life-boat that can come 



138 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

to their deliverance there remaineth nothing for 
them but a certain fearful expectation of a grave 
in the whelming deep of judgment. Apart from 
Christ, the source of life, no soul can live. Except 
the branch abide in the vine it withers and dies. 
A movement from the tropics of grace to the 
arctic region of the law cannot be made with- 
out fatal consequences. For how can the tender 
flowers of virtue that drooped and withered 
when blessed with genial sunshine and showers, 
hope to grow amid snow and ice ? 

Calvary was no experiment. It was the con- 
summation of God's remedial scheme. Love 
like water finds its level. At the Cross the love 
of God reached its highest point. Beyond the 
gift of his Son, God cannot go. It is vain to ex- 
pect, in the far away future, some higher manifes- 
tation of saving power. Let no one think that 
those who have not been won to moral goodness 
by the Cross will be recovered in some other way. 
All such hope is excluded by the declaration 
that for those who in the exercise of conscious 
freedom have stepped outside the circle of 
redeeming grace, " there remaineth no other sacri- 
fice for sin." Having withdrawn themselves from 
the sphere in which divine grace most power- 
fully operates, and having surmounted everything 
that might have arrested their fatal course, they 
move with fast diminishing attraction from the 



THE SIN THA T SHUTS THE DOOR. 1 39 

great center of life, into outer and utter darkness. 
Not that the virtue of Christ's sacrifice can be 
exhausted by the most aggravated sin ; not that 
the divine store of mercy can ever run out, so 
that to the hungry, famishing soul there is not a 
crumb to give. The sacrifice of Christ remaineth 
in all its glorious sufficiency and efficiency, but 
its benefits do not reach those who surrender 
themselves to sin. A state of willful sin dissolves 
the connection between the soul and Christ. 
" When the righteous turneth from his righteous- 
ness and committeth iniquity, he shall even die 
thereby." Faith continues to grow only so long 
as it is kept rooted in the soil of a pure life. 
Christ saves not in y but from sin. An old writer 
says, " It is not falling into the water that 
drowns, but lying in it ; so it is not falling 
into sin that damns, but continuing in it." The 
blackest apostate may recover himself and renew 
his confidence in the Redeemer; although 
sorely wounded he may rally and resume the 
conflict ; by deeds meet for repentance he may 
wipe out the disgrace of the past ; in the sacri- 
fice once slighted he may again find all that he 
desires and requires ; but the apostate that re- 
mains in a state of willful alienation from Christ, 
and attachment to sin, forfeits forever all interest 
in Christ and his great salvation. 

Very little account is taken in Scripture of 



140 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

mere heresy of belief ; heresies of the heart and 
life being the evils specially condemned. There 
is, however, one doctrine singled out, the denial 
of which brings certain judgment. Using a 
strong adjective the apostle Peter speaks of cer- 
tain false teachers as "bringing in destructive 
heresies, even denying the Lord that bought 
them." * To deny Christ is the heresy of here- 
sies. It is the very " schism of perdition." But 
to deny Christ, and to deny human dogmas re- 
garding him, are two very different things. 
Many a soul bows reverently before the Master, 
while honestly rejecting human theories that 
have been formed concerning his person and 
work. Many who look upon the Gospels as 
beautiful legends bow before the peerless life 
which they portray, giving to it the deepest 
homage of their hearts, and making it the object 
of their loving imitation. The Christ whom they 
deny is some fancied Christ of their own ; the 
Christ whom they ignorantly worship is " the 
Lord that bought them." Forsaking the beaten 
orthodox path they come round to Christ by 
another way. Conforming their lives to the per- 
fect pattern shown to them on the Mount, they 
unconsciously take the Man of Nazareth as their 
inspiration and model. Happy are those who 



* 2 Peter ii. i. 



THE SIN THAT SHUTS THE DOOR. 141 

thus, in spite of conflicting theories, in spite of de- 
fective knowledge, and in spite of imperfect faith 
touching Christ and his atonement, reach the 
glorious reality which lies at the center of Chris- 
tian doctrine ! Happy are those who, ascending 
above the fogs of abstract speculation, soar into 
the clear light of devout contemplation, worship- 
ping the real Christ in the Ideal ! Not any 
theory of the Divinity of Christ, but the Divine 
Christ himself, the living, loving, personal Re- 
deemer, is the foundation upon which saving 
faith rests ; the living Head in which all the faith- 
ful are united. Separation from him is the 
deadly schism, bringing ruin, swift and irremedi- 
able. Separation from the real or ideal Christ, 
means disconnection from remedial influences — 
and hence from the hope of spiritual improve- 
ment. When love of sin grows stronger, and 
love to Christ grows weaker, the tie that binds to 
Christ is finally sundered, and the last, the only 
resort given up. Who can succeed where Christ 
has failed? Hope goes out in the blackness of 
despair when his sacrifice is discarded ; for the 
whole universe affords no other remedy for sin. 
" Other foundation can no man lay, than that 
which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." " And in 
none other is there salvation, for neither is there 
any other name under heaven, that is given 
among men, wherein we must be saved." 



142 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

Because of the essential relation of Christ to 
humanity every man has some kind of connection 
with him. He is set for the falling and rising up 
of all men. Some are guided by the light of his 
Cross to pardon, purity and peace ; others wound 
and damage their moral natures by dashing 
themselves against the Cross — as seabirds sweep- 
ing up out of the darkness dash themselves 
against a friendly lighthouse. Some welcome 
and accept him, in whatever form he comes, and 
he becomes to them the rock upon which they 
build the temple of a holy life ; others reject him 
in ignorance, and he becomes unto them " a 
stone of stumbling and a rock of offense " — 
upon which they carelessly strike in the dark, 
and are bruised ; others consciously reject him, 
and to them he becomes " the Head Stone of 
the corner " which from its elevation at the top 
of the building falls upon them in crushing, de- 
stroying judgment ; grinding them to powder. 



XI. 
THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 



" Such is the constitution of things that unwillingness to good- 
ness may ripen into voluntary opposition to it." — Muller. 

" At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ? ' 
To which an answer pealed from that high land, 
But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
God made himself an awful rose of dawn." 

Tennyson {The Vision of Sin). 

" Forever round the mercy-seat 

The guiding lights of Love shall burn ; 
But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
Shall lack the will to turn ? " 

Whittier. 



XI. 

THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 

UPON the chart of Scripture the maelstrom of 
" eternal sin" * is laid down as the chief danger- 
point in the voyage of moral existence. Toward 
that dread maelstrom every voyager who has 
deviated from the prescribed course is being 
steadily carried, to be caught at length in the 
fateful embrace of its swirling currents. " In 
danger," not " of an eternal sin," but " of eternal 
sin," is the exact thought of the portentous 
words of Christ. It is not a single act of sin, but 
a state of bondage to sin, that is indicated. 
Through the inevitable tendency of sin towards 
permanence, every one who has entered upon the 
downward path of willful opposition to divine 
authority is in danger of becoming fixed in a 
state of eternal opposition to God. Sin has got- 
ten him in its iron, relentless grip, and he is in 
danger of being held in its grip forever. " His 
own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and 



* Mark iii. 29. 
10 



I46 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

he shall be holden with the cords of the sin, — " 
holden with the cords of his sin as the ship is 
held by the anchor which lies at the bottom of 
the sea firmly embedded in the mud. 

The suggestion of the possibility and danger 
of eternal sin sheds a lurid light upon the 
problem of the future life. One thing is made 
clear : — the next world is a continuation of the 
present, grows out of it, is governed by the same 
laws, and is embraced in the empire of the same 
King. Death works no essential change in 
human nature or in human character. Every 
man goes on in the next life as he is headed in 
this; his character continuing to improve or de- 
generate according to the bent which has here 
been given to it. Character is reproductive, self- 
perpetuating. In every sinner there is a ten- 
dency to sin, in every saint a tendency to 
goodness. Persistence in any moral course leads 
to an even increasing momentum. Everywhere 
in the Spiritual Kingdom, the law of increase 
obtains : " Unto him that hath shall be given 
and he shall have abundance." The reproductive 
power of character is endless. Every life is a 
tree yielding fruit " whose seed is in itself." 
" Every action," says Richter, " becomes more 
certainly an eternal mother than an eternal 
daughter." So that although freedom can never 
change to fate, every life pursuing its own free 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 1 47 

course along the line of natural development 
must pass on to the great crisis when the seal of 
destiny is fixed upon character, and the Lord 
shall say, " He that is unrighteous, let him do 
unrighteousness yet more ; and he that is filthy, 
let him be made filthy yet more ; and he that is 
righteous, let him do righteousness yet more ; 
and he that is holy, let him be made holy yet 
more." 

Moral rewards, whether in the present or in 
the future life, are not outward and arbitrary. 
They consist in the perpetuation of character. 
Men receive the very things done in the body. 
Whatsoever they sow, that they also reap. The 
reward of holiness is more holiness; the reward 
of sin is more sin. The crown of the righteous 
is a crown of righteousness. Heaven and hell 
are permanent when that out of which they are 
made is permanent. So long as a soul grows in 
holiness the gates of the new Jersualem may 
stand open day and night, but there will be no 
desire to go out : so long as a soul by continu- 
ing to sin adds fresh fuel to the fire, hell can 
never burn itself out, but must be "the fire that 
is not quenched." 

But while it is beyond question that character 
through the accumulation of moral force leads to 
fixedness, it ought to be carefully noted that 
fixedness of character is not the obliterating 



148 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

from the soul of all power of self-movement, it is 
not the literal changing of the heart into stone. 
Contrariwise, it is a voluntary condition, a condi- 
tion of moral permanence resulting from fixity of 
choice. Eternal sin is the eternal voluntary op- 
position of the soul to goodness and to God. A 
state of eternal sin there could not possibly be if 
the moral nature of man had given the last flutter 
of expiring power, and had become unchange- 
ably fixed not merely in choice, but in powerless- 
ness to choose. The steadfast holding on to a 
fixed and settled purpose does not mean the sur- 
render of liberty of choice. The saint and the 
sinner do not lose their liberty of choice when 
they persevere to the end in their respective 
moral courses ; Satan does not lose his liberty of 
choice when he says of evil, ' Be thou my good ! ' 
the Redeemed in heaven do not lose their liberty 
of choice when they remain forever within the 
walls of the City whose gates are shut neither by 
day nor by night. Sin and righteousness must 
needs be continuously chosen. They are moral 
states because they are voluntary states. Neither 
here nor hereafter will they or can they be made 
compulsory. 

If God by the exercise of omnipotent will 
could make men good, he could just as easily 
have kept them from becoming bad. And why 
did he not do so? Why did he create a being 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 1 49 

capable of sinning? Rather ask, Why did he 
create a moral being at all ? Why did he create 
a man ? A thing he could create incapable of 
sinning, a man he could not. In the creation of 
a free, finite being the capability and hence the 
possibility of sinning is necessarily involved. 
Professor Huxley could therefore hardly have 
counted the cost when he declared, " If I could 
be turned into a clock and wound up every 
morning in order to be made to think and do 
what is right, I would instantly close with the 
offer." What ! be willing to be made incapable 
of doing wrong at the price of having all moral 
power destroyed ? Be willing to be changed 
from an imperfect man into a perfect machine ? 
Be willing to be reduced from a man to a thing? 
To all who express such a preference it is 
enough to answer, " Ye know not what ye ask." 

Those who imagine that God can deal with 
souls as he does with stars, are often at a loss to 
understand why he does not stir up his strength, 
and by some summary process bring every wan- 
derer back, and compel him to move in his 
proper orbit. " Just a little more divine pressure 
upon the souls of men, which should come as 
softly as vernal breezes, and the work might 
soon be done."" Indeed! Is it so easy? If 

* Eternal Atonement. R. A. Hitchcock, p. 305. 



150 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

that is all that is required, strange that God 
should delay ! Would you withhold the pressure 
that would make virtue a necessity, if it was in 
your power to give it ? But, has God the power, 
when moral means prove insufficient, to bear 
down upon man and compel him to be good ? 
Can he force him to become a volunteer ; or can 
he force him to act against his will ? He cannot. 
Are not all things possible with God ? Yes, all 
things that do not imply a contradiction, which 
the very idea of compulsory goodness does. If 
pressure could take the place of persuasion, there 
is no reason why God should continue to labor 
and to wait. If a touch of the finger of Omnipo- 
tence could make men good, we turn with won- 
der to the costly sacrifice of Calvary, and ask : 
" Wherefore all this waste ? " 

Nothing is more certain than that character is 
always self-chosen. Coerce the free spirit of 
man God could not if he would, and would not 
if he could. The same cloud of mystery hangs 
around the origin of obedience that hangs around 
the origin of sin. Both originate in the will. 
Every moral act is performed ; every moral state 
is entered into, and continued in, by deliberate 
choice. Character being self-chosen, it neces- 
sarily follows that it must continue subject to 
modification and change. At the same time it 
is possible for character, without losing a single 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I $ I 

essential moral quality, to harden into a shape 
which it is certain to retain. Although change- 
able it may never change. Who has not seen 
men come, in a few years, under the power of 
evil habits which have held complete mastery over 
them to the end of life ? With ever increasing 
rapidity bad habits grow ; around their victims 
they coil in ever tightening embrace ; and while 
no one dare say they cannot be shaken off, yet 
knowing the experience of the past, reading in 
the present a prophecy of the future, we have 
every reason to fear that they will not. When 
men have made a willing surrender of themselves 
to the power of evil, they are held captive by it 
— prisoners in chains. They have come into a 
state of moral bondage, which, in spite of contin- 
ued opportunities of escape, may last forever. 

Not from lack of power but from the absence 
of will to use the power possessed, does any one 
remain bound in the fetters of sin. Power is 
often present when unemployed. There is much 
latent, unused power, power which may never be 
brought into exercise, but for the right exercise 
of which the possessor will nevertheless be held to 
a strict account. Increased unwillingness to act 
is part of the penalty which follows the delay of 
moral action. Indolence breeds apathy. As the 
call of duty is put off indisposition increases until 
at length all desire to act fades out of the soul. 



152 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

Another count in the penalty of sinful inactiv- 
ity, and by no means the smallest, is the loss of 
power which it entails. Power unused decays ; 
power thrown away never returns. The stiffened 
joint never regains its wonted suppleness ; the 
withered limb never regains its wonted strength. 
Of many it may be said, " By not using their souls 
they lost them ; " of still more, By abusing their 
souls they lost them. It is in the degeneration of 
the moral nature itself that the direct effects of 
sin are seen. Sin smites the soul with spiritual 
atrophy and thereby " worketh death." " The 
development of evil, " says Muller, " ends in a 
state wherein unwillingness to goodness has 
ripened into inability, wherein personality per- 
sisting in alienation from God becomes absolutely 
petrified into sin." And as spiritual power de- 
clines it comes to pass that 

" He that wold not when he might, 
He shall not when he wold-a* " 

As the life-forces of the soul recede more and 
more into the root, the budding forth of effort to 
reform grows feebler and feebler, until at last the 
moral nature that might have been found bend- 
ing low with clusters of rich, ripe fruit, stands 
forth in utter nakedness a withered tree, which is 



Percy. 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I $3 

henceforth good for nothing but to serve as fuel 
for the everlasting burning. 

In the doctrine of " eternal sin," the question 
of future punishment is approached from the 
moral side ; and this is fortunately the side from 
which, in the present day, it is being more and 
more approached and studied. The thought is 
becoming clearer that the main thing to be 
dreaded is not eternal punishment, but eternal 
sin; not the possible interminableness of punitive 
suffering but the possible interminableness of op- 
position to the will of God. All the effort of 
God in redemption is to save from sin, and espe- 
cially from the dreadful end of fixedness in sin. 
Christ is the Redeemer from sin. He came to 
deliver man from the power of sin, to help man 
to break away from sin, to prevent man from 
hardening into a state of continued and eternal 
bondage to sin. Seeking a moral end he de- 
pends upon moral forces, and appeals to moral 
motives. The one thing which he emphasizes 
is character ; destiny being regarded as simply a 
question of moral tendency. Is evil prevailing 
over good, or good over evil ? Is the brute gain- 
ing ascendency over the angel, or the angel over 
the brute? If the former, a character is being 
formed prophetic of eternal sin and misery ; if 
the latter, a character is being formed prophetic 
of eternal righteousness and joy. Only by keep- 



1^4 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

ing hell out of man can man be kept out of hell. 
Only by cleansing character from sin can salvation 
from punishment be secured ; for sin and punish- 
ment are coexistent, coextensive. They are 
related to each other as substance to shadow ; 
cause to effect. Punishment is not outward and 
arbitrary but inward and moral. Every man is 
punished through the law of his own being. 
Eternal sin brings eternal punishment, is eternal 
punishment. As long as man is held fast in the 
power of sin it is not in the nature of things pos- 
sible that he can escape from the punishment 
which it involves. "If you were blind," said 
Jesus to the Jews, "ye would have no sin; but, 
now ye say We see, your sin remaineth " — that is, 
it is not blotted out or taken away. And where 
sin remains condemnation remains. So long as 
man continues to sin he will continue to gather 
into his bosom the penalty of sin. An unholy 
being will always be a consuming fire unto him- 
self. "The unquenchable fire" will burn on 
unhindered in the sinning soul until its work is 
done. 

Were the punishment of sin something out- 
wardly imposed, reason and conscience would rise 
up in open revolt against the idea of its inter- 
minableness. For sin is not an infinite offense. 
Such a thing as an infinite evil there cannot be. 
There is only one infinite and that is the Infinite 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. 1 5 5 

Good — which is God. Many, fixing their thought 
upon the finitude of sin, and overlooking the 
true nature of punishment ask: "If sin be finite 
may not the penalty of it run out ; may not the 
sinner pay his debt unto the uttermost far- 
thing, and be delivered from the prison-house of 
retribution?" This blessed possibility admitted, 
another fearful possibility remains — a possibility 
in which lies the real difficulty in the way of the 
ultimate restoration of a lost soul, and that is the 
possibility that he may continue to incur fresh 
debts; the possibility that he may be held for- 
ever a willing captive in the dungeon of evil ; 
the possibility — yea, the danger — that the sin 
which now holds him in its grasp may hold him 
in its grasp forever. 

But while it is true that eternal persistence in 
sin is the only valid ground of eternal punish- 
ment, there is a modified sense in which the pun- 
ishment of every sin is eternal. Every sin brings 
eternal loss. When Jesus, describing the final 
judgment, said regarding the left-hand division : 
" These shall go away into the punishment of 
the ages," he evidently saw in their sinful selfish- 
ness something that would be to them a con- 
tinual source of self-inflicted misery. The future 
world could never be to them what it might have 
been if they had spent their lives on earth as 
ministering angels to the poor and the oppressed. 



156 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

Because of the non-development of the spirit of 
benevolence they would suffer age-lasting loss, 
age-lasting punishment. Their case strikingly 
illustrates the principle of punishment by loss, 
which is everywhere in operation. As the child is 
punished in the home by the curtailment of privi- 
lege, the civil offender by the deprivation of lib- 
erty, so the unbenevolent are punished, here and 
hereafter, by the loss of happiness, the loss of 
Heaven. In the universe of God things are so or- 
dered that it never pays to do wrong, or to omit 
the performance of the smallest righteous act. 
All sin results in self-injury. " He that sinneth 
against me," God had said, " wrongeth his own 
soul." In the punishment of sin there is some- 
thing which no direct act of Almighty power 
can lift from off the soul. Even if sin be for- 
given, the restored child, happy in his Father's 
love, has to suffer the natural and necessary 
effect of his wrong-doing. Although his sin is 
blotted out, so that it no longer disturbs the rela- 
tion of friendship between him and God, many 
sad traces of it are left. Where the thorn has 
been extracted a painful spot remains. The 
damage wrought by sin is not repaired ; wasted 
energies are not restored ; the vigor and elastic- 
ity of youth are not brought back ; the vanished 
years of a misspent life are not recalled. At the 
very moment when the prodigal is being pressed 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I tf 

in gladness and joy to the Father's bosom, the 
shame of his sin burns hotly within his heart. 
The evil effects of his former state he cannot lay 
aside as he does his rags ; they follow him from 
the far country into the Father's house and cling 
to him forever. 

Let the distinction then be noted between the 
soul that sins eternally, and is eternally lost ; 
and the soul that having sinned sustains eternal 
loss. Those who sin, even if they should after- 
wards repent, suffer loss : those who continue in 
sin are lost — the curse of sin is with them un- 
lifted, the suffering of sin unrelieved. To be 
saved from the punishment of sin they must be 
saved from sin itself. Here we are confronted 
with the question : Will all, or any, be saved 
from sin in the future ? What ground is there to 
hope that the lost will be found, the dead be 
made alive? May not punishment for sin be 
redemptive? May not every case in which 
suffering is inflicted be a case in which suffering 
is the only remedy? May not every case in 
which a soul is cast into the lake of fire, be a 
case in which the fires of judgment are the only 
possible purgation ? What light, if any, is 
thrown upon the problem by the expressions 
" eternal sin " and " eternal punishment " ? Dean 
Plumptre contends that the qualifying word 
aionios, which in the present discussion has been 



1^8 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

somewhat freely rendered eternal, expresses 
" undefined and not infinite duration." Had he 
contented himself with saying that it expresses 
undefined duration, his assertion would have been 
correct. The literal meaning of aionios is " age- 
long." As to whether sin and punishment are 
limited in duration or absolutely eternal aionios 
is entirely non-committal. It tells how long 
they may last, not how long they will last. But 
while it expresses undefined duration, it suggests 
no idea of limitation ; the prospect which it 
opens up is one which has no visible bound ; the 
road which it brings into view is one which has 
no visible terminus. If the claim be allowed that 
it does not forbid hope ; in the interests of truth 
it must be added, that it does not give hope. 

From the appalling possibility of continuous 
sin and suffering, relief has been sought in the 
literal destruction of the irreclaimably wicked. 
It has been thought that after the present epoch 
of redemption has run to a close there will be 
left a moral rubbish heap, which will be burned 
up, as the chaff of the Eastern threshing-floor — a 
rubbish heap containing no undeveloped germs 
of goodness, but composed entirely of that which 
is intrinsically bad, and hopelessly irreclaimable. 
Unfed by the oil of grace, which Christ supplies, 
the flame of the spirit-life will burn lower and 
still lower ; until too feeble to live, it will flicker 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. I 59 

and expire. Under the destroying power of sin 
the soul will shrink and shrivel, steadily going 
down in the volume and quality of being, until 
the moral powers are dwarfed, the moral sensibil- 
ities blunted and benumbed ; so that not only is 
there loss of happiness, but also loss of the 
power of happiness ; and, by parity of reasoning, 
not only is there a diminishing of suffering, but 
also a diminishing of capacity for suffering. The 
man who sins is less of a man than he was 
before ; the man who continues in sin ultimately 
loses every vestige of manhood ; sinking down 
into moral nothingness, perishing in his own cor- 
ruption. This, it is held, is " the second death ; " 
not the death of something in man, but the 
death, the literal dissolution, of man himself. 
In support of this theory it is triumphantly 
asked, Do not the destructive processes of 
nature show degeneration passing on to mortifi- 
cation, and mortification ending in death ? But 
it is forgotten that natural processes are merely 
analogies of spiritual processes. Spiritual death 
is self-destruction — the voluntary separation of 
the soul from God. As the life that is in Christ 
is spiritual, the death that is out of Christ is also 
spiritual. Eternal sin and eternal death are one. 
Vain are all attempts to fill up the bottomless 
pit; to exhaust it of its darkness; or to sink a 
shaft into it, in the hope of finding light on the 



l60 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

other side. The bottomless pit remains, but it 
remains open. Those who have their place in it, 
are there in spite of the unwearied efforts of 
Divine Love to turn them back from such a dole- 
ful end. Do not those who stay in it, stay in it 
in spite of all the efforts of Divine Love to lift 
them out ? Is it asked : How does such a suppo- 
sition comport with the words addressed by 
Abraham to the nameless rich man in Hades : 
" Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, 
that they which would pass from hence to you 
may not be able, and none may cross over from 
thence to us " ? It might be enough to say in 
reply, that these words do not refer to everlasting 
condemnation or salvation, but to " an as yet 
unalterable " state of things in Hades — the abode 
of disembodied spirits during the interim between 
death and the resurrection. But, passing that 
over, the words as used have clearly a restricted 
application. The rich man had prayed Abraham 
to send Lazarus to him to alleviate his misery ; to 
which request Abraham answered that " no inter- 
course could be held between Paradise and 
Gehenna, and on this account a vast and impass- 
able chasm existed between the two." (So 
Edersheim.) The intervening space is not a 
mere hand-breadth, as the Jewish Rabbins pic- 
tured it, but a yawning impassable abyss, " which 
cannot be overleaped by presumption on the one 



THE CHIEF DANGER-POINT. l6l 

hand, or sympathy on the other." (So Stier.) 
No wishing or willing can waft a soul across this 
dividing gulf. No power divine can bridge it 
over; for it represents the separation of souls 
according to essential character. But while 
there can be no intercommunication, no volun- 
tary passing to and fro, so long as character 
remains unchanged ; there is nothing to preclude 
the idea of possible transition on the ground of 
change of character ; and the possibility of 
change of character will at once be conceded by 
those who accept the axiomatic dictum that no 
state of conscious being can be considered moral 
in which only one course of action is possible. 
But, dreading to push a divine philosophy to the 
point where it might become " a chartered reck- 
lessness," a reverent faith pausing here on the 
edge of the mountain-precipice to which that 
philosophy has led, plants her standard on this 
truth : " The mercy of the Lord endureth for- 
ever." " Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
of mercy " none can pass. Infinite love can neither 
change nor die, but must live through eternity, 
eternally striving to overcome the perversity of 
every creature's will. The wings of the Almighty 
are never folded, but are always invitingly out- 
spread, that under them may be lovingly gath- 
ered those (if any such there be) who in the 
fire of suffering have learned lessons of spirit- 
ii 



1 62 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

ual wisdom, and have sought to return to their 
rest. 

We thus find the danger-point in moral exist- 
ence where Christ locates it, — in man himself, and 
not in God. The outer, utter darkness, into 
which no blessed light of comfort enters, is the 
darkness in which a sin-loving soul has enveloped 
himself. Not because of sin committed in the 
past which the mercy of Heaven cannot cancel ; 
not because of any restraint of the moral faculties 
by which moral change is made impossible ; but 
because of mercy eternally rejected ; — because 
of sin freely, continuously and eternally commit- 
ted — does the dark cloud of condemnation settle 
down upon any soul, enwrapping him in the 
impenetrable gloom of an eternal night. 



XII. 
THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 



" A good will is the greatest thing in the universe." — Kant. 

" A character is a completely formed will." — Novalis. 

11 He had thought about it, prayed about it, and half resolved 
to do it, for a long time. At last one day the resolution leaped 
forth full grown into a very decided ' I'll do it,' and the ash stick 
came down with an equally vigorous, ' Amen. 1 " 

— From a Homily by Mister Horn. 

" Man is his own star, and the soul that can 
Render an honest and a perfect man 
Commands all light, all influence, all fate. 
Nothing to him falls early, or too late." 

Fletcher. 

" In the transactions between God and the souls of men, with 
respect unto their obedience and salvation, there is none of 
them but hath a. power in sundry things, as to some degrees and 
measures of them, to comply with his mind and will, which they 
voluntarily neglect." — John Owen. 



XII. 

THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 

There are two elements which, entering into 
life, make it probationary down to the last atom : 
namely, human freedom and divine grace ; the 
one constituting the ground of man's probation as 
a moral being, the other constituting the ground 
of his probation as a sinful moral being. By 
emptying life of either of these elements it is 
robbed of the moral significance which has usu- 
ally been attached to it. Take away the free 
agency of man, and the very possibility of proba- 
tion is taken away ; for if man be not free to 
choose his destiny, his life on earth is in no true 
sense a state of moral discipline and trial. By 
making human fate hang upon the Absolute 
Will and not upon the supreme and ultimate 
choice of the individual, the foundation of re- 
sponsibility is undermined, and man is stripped 
of all the essential qualities of a moral being. 
On the other hand, eliminate from life the 
universal operations of divine grace, and the 
idea of adequate probation is destroyed ; for since 



1 66 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

apart from Christ — in whom is treasured up, and 
through whom is distributed the fullness of divine 
grace — man as a fallen being cannot attain unto 
salvation, apart from Christ man cannot have a 
probation suitable to his present circumstances 
and needs. And inasmuch as the very condi- 
tions which render probation possible render sal- 
vation possible, the redeemability or salvability 
of man must depend upon the possibility of orig- 
inating moral change, and the capacity for re- 
ceiving divine influences and responding to them. 

Possibility of moral change is inseparable from 
moral character. If from any cause moral change 
were to become impossible, it would be a sign 
that moral annihilation had already taken place. 
As a moral being man possesses power of self- 
action, power to put forth moral effort, power to 
bring to pass, within certain limits, results which 
he has before determined. He can change and 
modify the future, yea, he can create the future. 
His future is what he chooses to make it. 

The appeals of Scripture are themselves suffi- 
cient to prove that in Heaven's estimation at 
least, no one to whom they are addressed has 
passed beyond the possibility of altering his 
moral course. After those who have wandered 
furthest in the downward path of evil, is the 
word of tender entreaty sent, "Turn ye, turn ye, 
why will ye die." Inability to turn to God is 



THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. \6j 

purely moral. Those who cannot repent are not 
those who are unable, but those who are unwill- 
ing to repent. Those who " cannot cease from 
sin " are not those who have no power, but 
those who have no disposition to abandon sin. 
As sinful habit roots itself deeper and deeper in 
the soil of the depraved heart, " will not " passes 
into "cannot." But "cannot "is always trans- 
latable back again into "will not." For the 
bondage of sin is always a willing bondage ; and 
the only insuperable obstacle in the way of a sin- 
ner's return to God is his own unwillingness. 

With the strong tendency towards individual- 
ism which came into New England theology as a 
natural reaction from the over-development of 
the idea of corporate responsibility by a state 
church, special emphasis was given to the doc- 
trine of man's inherent ability as a moral being 
to repent of his sin, and keep the command- 
ments of God. Natural inability was stoutly 
rebutted, and the moral enfranchisement of 
every man openly declared that the dormant 
conscience might be aroused, and the conviction 
of moral responsibility pressed home upon every 
individual heart. It is largely owing to the in- 
fluence of New England theology upon Christian 
thought that there has come to be substantial 
agreement upon the point that in things moral 
can is the measure of ought. No longer is it 



1 68 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

questioned that ability and responsibility are 
equal ; that only what a man can do is he under 
obligation to do, and that what he cannot do, he 
is in no wise bound to do. If power to repent 
and obey God be taken away, repentance and 
righteousness cease to be duties ; and all 
blameworthiness for their absence is completely 
cancelled. Unless man should cease to be what 
he now is — a moral being, some measure of 
moral power must be continued to him forever, 
together with some measure of opportunity for 
the exercise of that power. If in this world, or 
in any other world, moral power and opportunity 
be utterly lost, moral identity is lost ; the sense 
of duty which is always present in a moral 
nature is destroyed, yea, the moral nature itself 
is blotted out. So long as a human being re- 
mains a moral being, he must continue to sow 
new crops of moral actions, and reap new har- 
vests of punishment and reward. 

Not unfrequently is the question raised : " Can 
it be supposed that any one will be consigned to 
eternal woe who is still capable of redemption ? " * 
This question assumes that those only who are in- 
capable of redemption, that is to say, those who 
are incapable of moral change, will be consigned 
to eternal woe. But is it possible to conceive 
of self-conscious punishment inflicted upon moral 

* Ed. Article in Andover Review, May, 1887. 



THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 1 69 

incapables ? Is it not universally conceded that 
"the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is 
not quenched " are the remorse of a guilty con- 
science in which the double sense of moral 
responsibility and moral ability still lingers ? 
Were the divine government to visit punishment 
upon those who are incapable of reformation, 
would not the same principle of equity be vio- 
lated as in the case of an earthly government 
that should visit punishment upon hopeless 
imbeciles and idiots ? 

From a new quarter the destruction of human 
freedom and responsibility is being threatened. 
Birth and education are said to determine human 
conduct : every volition is said to be a link in an 
endless chain of causation ; and character the 
necessary sequence, the natural product, of certain 
antecedent states and influences. In this there is 
a measure of truth and a measure of error. Unity 
and continuity do unquestionably belong to 
character. No single action stands isolated from 
past choices and conditions. The present grows 
out of the past, the future out of the present. 
When Homer exclaimed, " I am part of all that I 
have met," he might have added, " and of all that 
I have been or done." But, behind all the subtle 
influences of heredity and environment, behind 
the conflicting motives by which the moral 
nature is beset and besieged, behind the resultant 



170 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

tendencies of previous moral states, there is a 
potent personality, which is the sole determining 
power in moral action. By things outside the 
moral nature character is influenced but not 
determined, conditioned but not controlled, 
affected but not caused. Man is himself the 
cause of his own character. Motives impel but 
do not compel his inner choice. Never is he 
forced to act in a way to which he has already 
been predestined. The limitations which life 
imposes and the opportunities which life affords 
he may accept as necessary elements in the 
scheme of his existence, and within that ap- 
pointed circle by which his life is bounded he 
may freely work out his own destiny ; running 
with patience the race set before him, and finish- 
ing his course with joy. 

Those who have undertaken to forecast the 
character and destiny of man from his constitu- 
tion and environment have too often overlooked 
the province of the will as a self-determining 
power. It is as if some one observing the move- 
ment of the clouds should conclude that the ship 
could move only in the same direction ; forget- 
ting that the captain with his hand upon the 
helm can use the wind so as to steer his ship in a 
course almost the opposite of that to which the 
wind is blowing. Without this self-determining 
power virtue would be an impossibility. To act 



THE FL UIDIl^Y OF CHAR A CTER. I J I 

virtuously man has often to cleave his way against 
the strong current of desire. Closing his ears to 
the seductive voice of his evil, selfish nature, 
and opening his ears to the protest of his higher 
nature, he has to urge his reluctant feet to walk 
in the path of righteousness and self-denial. 
" In the united states of thought and feeling the 
will occupies the position of a President," against 
whose decisions there exists no power of veto. 
Within the inner kingdom of self, the will rules 
with regal power holding in subjection " the 
fleshly lusts which war against the soul." Spurn- 
ing the pleasurable because it is also the sinful, 
the will often chooses the unpleasant because it 
is also the right. As saith the judicious Hooker: 
" Appetite is the will's solicitor, and the will is 
appetite's controller; what we covet according 
to the one, by the other we often reject." 

To the question : " Up to what point is man 
capable of redemption ? " there can be only one 
answer. Man is capable of redemption up to the 
point of the extinction of his moral nature. So 
long as a shred of moral power is left there is the 
possibility of moral recovery. For character is 
not like a vase or statue which when once shat- 
tered is forever hopelessly destroyed. Rather is it 
like a living organism which though maimed and 
injured may be restored to soundness. Character 
is vital and changing, not dead and sterotyped. 



172 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

It is like liquid metal that can be fashioned into 
any shape, and not like metal which has been 
run into a mould, and has become solid and un- 
alterable. Even when it has become in some 
degree hardened it may be remelted in the fur- 
nace of repentance. Character is germinal and 
structural : while it lives it grows, and while it 
grows it changes ; and when it changes for the 
worse there is always the possibility that it 
may yet change for the better. However pitia- 
ble the wreck of manhood, there is always left 
some remnant of self-determining power, some 
measure of ability to leave the dismal swamp of 
sinful indulgence for the bracing uplands of 
virtuous self-restraint. Out of the deepest 
"slough of despond " the soul may struggle and 
gain at last the Celestial City. The most abject 
moral serf may assert his inborn nobility of 
nature and become " a crowned King of Life." 
Everything hangs upon the flat of the will. 
Since in the will lies the reforming power — the 
power to originate change — reformation can be 
secured only by rousing it to action. " Wilt 
thou be made whole?" is the question which the 
Great Healer puts to every sin-sick soul. And 
when any one gathers up his wasted energies for 
a supreme effort— when at the bidding of the 
Lord he stretches forth his withered hand — life 
and health return. 



THE FL UIDITY OF CHA RA C TER. 1 7 3 

Capacity to receive divine knowledge and influ- 
ence and to respond to them, is inseparable fro?n 
moral character. The question of the Lord of 
Life is not, " Wik thou heal thyself?" but, 
" Wilt thou be made whole ? Wilt thou submit 
to my healing touch? Wilt thou give up thy 
case into my hands, that I may make thee 
whole ? " 

The redeemability of man lies in his ability to 
avail himself of the healing power of Christ ; his 
ability to receive what Christ has come to im- 
part. Through the corrupting influence of sin, 
the moral nature of man has undergone deterio- 
ration until it has lost all recuperative power. 
As a fallen nature it is " indisposed, disabled and 
made opposite to all good." But it is painting 
the picture in darker hues than need be, to say 
that man is incapable of doing good, and capable 
only of sinning. It is enough to say that he has 
sustained a loss of power to do good, and that 
for the healthy, normal exercise of his spiritual 
nature he is dependent upon the efficacious grace 
of God. " A gracious ability has been given him 
whereby he can co-operate with the Spirit of 
God " in his own redemption. Within his 
moral nature there is a vital center of causa- 
tion which can respond to the quickening and 
fructifying power of the Spirit. To secure his 
co-operation with the constant operations of 



174 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

divine grace is to secure his salvation. Just as 
the one end of all the curative agencies which 
medical science has discovered and adopted is to 
stir up the latent forces of corporeal life, that the 
attacks of disease may be repelled; so the one 
end of all the efforts of the Great Physician is to 
stir up the latent forces of spiritual life, that sin 
may be expelled, and the moral nature be made 
whole, and kept whole. Into the man of recep- 
tive heart God enters, making Himself the health 
of his countenance ; filling all the currents of his 
life with new energy ; stimulating and strength- 
ening his enfeebled moral nature, leading him 
" to will and to work, for His good pleasure;" 
and thus through the power which He him- 
self imparts enabling him to work out his own 
salvation with fear and trembling. Holding 
within himself the possibility of redemption, man 
has no right to remain under the power of evil. 
If he cannot heal himself, it is equally true that 
he cannot be healed apart from his own action in 
the matter. Human agency must interblend 
with divine agency. But the uncertain factor is 
never the divine one. God is always willing, 
always able, but man is not always ready. The 
ability to open his nature to the incoming of the 
energizing, life-giving Spirit is God's special gift 
of grace to the children of men. The faith by 
which we are saved is not of ourselves, it is the 



THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 1 75 

gift of God. To every man God " hath dealt out 
a measure of faith," * that is, a measure of the 
faith faculty, a measure of the faculty which en- 
ables him to receive divine truth and grace. 
Every man is constituted capable of receiving 
divine help ; for "the manifestation of the Spirit 
is given to every man to profit withal." To 
every man has been given power to make the 
decisive choice between life and death ; power to 
move forward towards the source of his life, or 
to turn away from it ; power to bring God into 
his soul or to shut him out. At the very 
thought of such an endowment of power well 
may he tremble. It is the possession of this 
power that makes him the arbiter of his own 
destiny. The eternal life which he is helpless to 
create, he can reject or receive. Rejecting that 
life, made over to him in Christ, he cuts himself 
off from the one source of remedial influence, 
and dies in his sins. Receiving that life he is 
made a partaker of the divine nature, and is thus 
constituted one of the spiritual children of God. 
For unto as many as receive Christ to them 
gives he power to become the sons of God, even 
to them that believe on his name. There is thus 
a volitional, and hence amoral element, in faith. 
Faith is a free and responsible act. The plaint 

* Rom. xiL 3. 



i;6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

of the Saviour is not that men cannot, but that 
they will not, come unto him that they might 
have life. None are so helpless as those that will 
not come. None are so blind as those that will 
not see. Lord Nelson could not see the signal 
for suspending the battle because he had pur- 
posely placed his glass to his blind eye. And 
many see not the truth because they have no 
mind to do so. Is it urged that man being 
" dead in trespasses and sins," is bereft of all 
power of moral action, and that he is unable to 
repent and turn to Christ? To such a conclu- 
sion Scripture lends no countenance. There the 
blind are called upon to look, the deaf to hear, 
the sleeper to awake, the dead to rise up. 
" Look, ye blind ! Hear, ye deaf ! Awake, thou 
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ 
shall give thee light." 

Trace the faith faculty back to its primal root, 
and it will be found growing out of the capacity 
for worship which belongs to man as a religious 
being. Power to receive the divine, suscepti- 
bility to divine influence, capacity to receive 
instruction in divine things, ability to render 
worshipful obedience to the divine being, mark 
man off as the possessor of a religious nature. 
Isolated races of men may have been discovered 
who were destitute of definite religious ideas, but 
no race of men has ever been found sunk so low 



THE FL UID1 TY OF CHAR A CTER. I J J 

as to be incapable of religious culture. The first 
Portuguese settlers at Cape Colony maintained 
that the Hottentots were " a race of apes incapa- 
ble of christian ization ; and over their church 
doors they placed the warning sign, " Dogs and 
Hottentots not admitted." But time has 
showed that those degraded Hottentots are pos- 
sessed of a religious nature, that they too are 
God's children, and that they are capable of res- 
toration into the divine image. 

When the first missionaries landed at Mada- 
gascar the French Governor called out, " So you 
will make the Malagsay, Christians ? Impossible ! 
they are mere brutes, and have no more sense 
than irrational creatures ; you might as well try 
to convert cattle." Touched with the living 
power of the Gospel of Christ these " irrational 
brutes " have been transformed into devout 
worshipers a of the one living and true God, 
and their island home, once the abode of 
horrid cruelty, has become a center of light 
and salvation unto surrounding heathen na- 
tions. 

When Charles Darwin, the naturalist, first 
visited the island of Tierra del Fuego he thought 
that he had discovered a race of men destitute of 
religious sentiments, if not destitute of a relig- 
ious nature. He was mistaken. Even in that 
debased people seeds of religious life lay dor- 



1 78 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

mant waiting for the sunshine of the gospel to 
fructify them. A humble missionary brought to 
them the word of life, and they became new men 
in Christ Jesus. And when, after the interval of 
a number of years Mr. Darwin again visited that 
island, and found that these brutal savages 
had developed into Christian disciples, he bore 
honorable testimony to the moral trans- 
formation that had been accomplished ; ascrib- 
ing, with noble frankness, the entire change 
to the elevating power of the Gospel of 
Christ. 

The twofold reason why the Gospel finds a 
responsive echo in the universal human heart is 
that the Gospel was made for man, and man was 
made for redemption by the Gospel. Inextin- 
guishable desires after a higher life are met by 
divine help to reach the loftiest ideals. Proph- 
ecies of redemption written in the nature of man 
find their fulfillment when Christ comes into 
possession of his own. 

Continuous effort on the part of God to arouse 
man to struggle for deliverance from the domin- 
ion of evil, puts to shame the faintest shadow of 
suspicion that any soul has been foredoomed to 
certain and inevitable defeat. Would God bestir 
himself if the case were hopeless? Would he 
provide sufficiency of means if recovery were im- 
possible ? Would he awaken aspiration if en- 



THE FLUIDITY OF CHARACTER. 1 79 

deavor were vain ? Would he induce any one to 
lift heavenward the empty vessel of faith, if 
there were no descending showers of grace by 
which it might be filled? 



XIII. 

JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 



11 Till their own dreams at length deceive 'em, 
And, oft repeating, men believe 'em." 

Prior. 

"It is one of the heaviest penalties of wrong thinking and 
wrong living that they blur, if they do not obliterate the very 
perceptions of good and evil." — Mary Clemmer. 

" In the nature of things, every sin against light draws blood 
on the spiritual retina." — Joseph Cook. 

" When we in our own viciousness grow hard 
(O, misery on't!) the wise gods seal our eyes; 
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us 
Adore our errors ; laugh at us, while we strut 

To our confusion." 

Shakespeare. 



XIII. 

JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 

The loss of power to discern between the true 
and the false, the good and the evil, is ascribed 
in Scripture to a direct divine operation. " God 
gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they 
should not see, and ears that they should not 
hear." * "The Lord hath poured upon you the 
spirit of deep sleep." f " He hath blinded their 
eyes, and he hardened their heart, lest they 
should see with their eyes, and perceive with 
their heart." % God sets his curse upon an unbe- 
lieving, impenitent heart. " He gives over a 
man who perseveres in resisting him, to blind- 
ness, so that he punishes himself, as it were, with 
his own hand." Nor is the blighting curse of 
unbelief confined to the future. It falls upon 
the soul now and here. Concerning those who 
pervert the light God has said : " Let their eyes 
be darkened that they may not see." 

Laws are not self-executing. The power that 

* Rom. xi. 8. t Isa. xxix. 10. J John xii. 40. 



1 84 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

gives them execution is the power of whose will 
they are the expression. To this rule the laws 
of the moral world form no exception. There- 
fore, when we say that moral blindness is the 
natural consequence of resisting the truth, we 
must not overlook the fact that it is by the 
agency of God that natural results are produced. 
What we call " natural law," is simply our dis- 
covery of the orderly method according to which 
God works in nature. In accordance with this 
orderly method, existing in the very constitution 
of things, God manifests his sore displeasure 
against sin by carrying it to its proper results, 
causing those who treat His truth with indiffer- 
ence or contempt to lose the power of apprehend- 
ing it. Alike in the physical and moral worlds it 
is a fixed principle that power rightly used in- 
creases, while power unused or abused, is lost. 
The eye that will not see cannot see. The ear 
that will not hear loses the power to hear. " For 
whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he 
shall have abundance, but whosoever hath not, 
from him shall be taken away even that which 
he hath." 

Of those upon whom has fallen a spirit of 
stupor it is said in Matt. xiii. 15, " Their eyes 
have they closed " ; and in John xii. 40, " He 
hath blinded their eyes." Looked at from one 
aspect this moral blindness is their own act ; 



JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 1 85 

looked at from another aspect it is the act of 
God. Between the two views there is no antag- 
onism. They describe different sides of the 
same moral condition. Those who wish not to 
be disturbed, dozingly close their inner eyes and 
keep them closed against heaven's sweet light 
which shines around them. They hide as it were 
their faces from the Anointed of God. Afraid 
lest they should be persuaded to repent they 
wilfully shut from their view all heavenly 
motives to a higher life. From this drowsy, 
slumbering state it is difficult to awake. Diffi- 
cult, but, thank God ! not impossible. While 
accountability lasts the slumberer may awake, 
ought to awake. " Awake, thou that sleepest, 
and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give 
thee light." Even the blind are held responsible 
for their blindness. " Look, ye blind ! " Tear 
off every bandage with which your spiritual eyes 
are blindfolded ! " Anoint your eyes with eye- 
salve, that you may see." Remain no longer in 
a state of willing ignorance. 

The posture of the heart has everything to do 
with the reception of truth. The strength of 
faith is not in proportion to the clearness of our 
perceptions of truth, but in proportion to the 
eagerness with which the truth is embraced. 
There are those who because of some moral 
defect which obscures their vision, are " ever 



1 86 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

learning but never able to come unto the knowl- 
edge of the truth." But, " as many as set them- 
selves in order to eternal life, believe." Faith is 
a link in a long chain of events. It is the out- 
growth of the antecedent life, and implies a con- 
dition of moral fitness for its exercise. Whether 
the truth will appear credible or incredible 
depends upon the state of the heart and life. 
" How can ye believe, which receive glory one of 
another, and the glory that cometh from the 
only God ye seek not ? " On the other hand, 
there are those who are being fitted to know and 
accept the teaching of Christ as soon as it is pre- 
sented : " If any man willeth to do his will, he 
shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God 
or whether I speak from myself." " He that 
doeth truth cometh to the light." " It is the 
great error of thoughtless biographers," says 
John Ruskin, " to attribute to accident some new 
phase of character ; whereas that phase of char- 
acter was practically in existence already, and 
the accident only served to develop and bring it 
out." Alluding to his own case he says, " Tur- 
ner's book might seem to be the point that 
determined the direction of my life. But the 
essential point to be accounted for is this, that I 
could understand Turner's book when I saw it." 
So in the case of those who come suddenly to " a 
knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus," the 



JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 1 8/ 

thing to be accounted for is that the truth 
should produce instantaneous conviction. Be- 
fore the mental sensitive plate could, in an 
instant, take on an indelible impression, it must 
have passed through some secret process of 
preparation. 

The things of the Spirit are spiritually dis- 
cerned. In an outward fashion the Jews saw 
"all that the Lord did before their eyes"; and 
yet Moses said, " The Lord hath not given you 
an heart to perceive, and eyes to see." They 
saw and yet they saw not. Events passed 
before their eyes the inner meaning of which 
they did not discern. " The works of God," 
remarks Godet, " are in two aspects, the one ex- 
ternal, the material fact ; the other internal, the 
divine thought contained in the fact : and thus it 
comes about that when the eye of the soul is 
paralyzed one may see these works without see- 
ing them." Just as some people are color-blind, 
others are morally blind. They are incapable of 
making clear moral distinctions. Wide awake 
regarding other matters, they are dull or con- 
fused whenever moral questions are touched. 

Moral blindness is the result of a wrong moral 
condition. Sin distorts the vision of the soul. 
Prejudice bandages the eyes. Bad morals lead 
to false doctrine. A bad heart is a blind heart. 
Over the eye-balls of the unholy grows a thick, 



1 88 UNTO THE UTTERMOST, 

horny scale which shuts God and his spiritual 
universe from sight. The diseased eye is pained 
by the light ; and those whose sin is rebuked can- 
not " endure sound doctrine." There is no proof 
so clear and cogent that an evil heart cannot 
repel. When men love not the truth they find 
no difficulty in rejecting it. " None deny there 
is a God," says Lord Bacon, " but those for 
whom it maketh that there were no God." The 
wish is father to the faith. Never does the 
beatific vision come unsolicited, but always in 
answer to the soul's deepest longings. Never 
does the sinful heart catch a perfect reflection 
of the truth. " The pure in heart shall see God." 
When men possess not " the love of the truth," 
God sends them strong delusion that they should 
believe a lie. Having shut their eyes to privilege 
and duty, God says, " Let their eyes be closed to 
danger, so that they shall say, Peace, peace, when 
there is no peace." Having put out the lamp in 
the light-house of conscience, they are allowed 
to wander from their course, and are wrecked 
upon the rocks. God blinds the heart that 
chooses error ; he hardens the heart that chooses 
evil. In this there is nothing inconsistent with 
his justice or benevolence. Would it be right 
that sin and holiness, unbelief and faith, should 
be treated in the same way? Would it be benev- 
olent to ordain that sin should prosper ? Could 



JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 1 89 

God be vindicated were he to dower a sinful life 
with the rightful inheritance of virtue ? It is 
demanded alike by the interests of the universe 
and the interests of the individual that God carry 
out every human choice to its proper end. 

Within every heart there is a continuous retri- 
bution going on, a retribution which turns upon 
the use which is being made of the light of life 
which shines upon the pathway of every pilgrim. 
" At every step of the way there is a faithfulness 
or unfaithfulness to the present life which God 
meets in the way of judgment." In the case of 
those who improve the light, there comes an in- 
crease of light in an increase of power to compre- 
hend it ; in the case of those who turn away 
from the light, the light that is in them becomes 
darkness, by the fading out of power to compre- 
hend the light that shines around them. 

Judgment is God's strange work, but it appears 
strange only because its true meaning is so often 
concealed. Judgment is sin brought to its final 
development, — sin with the mark of divine dis- 
pleasure upon it. Judgment is the warning 
voice of love, — the flaming sword to keep men 
out of the way of sin and death. 



XIV. 

A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 



" God himself cannot procure good to the wicked." 

— Anonymous. 

" But who would force the soul tilts with a straw 
Against a champion cased in adamant." 

Wordsworth, 

" Though God be good and free be Heaven, 
No force divine can love compel ; 
And, though the song of sins forgiven 
May sound through lowest hell, 

The sweet persuasion of His voice 

Respects thy sanctity of will. 
He giveth day ; thou hast thy choice 

To walk in darkness still." 

Whittier. 

" God never thrusts a man into hell ; he thrusts himself in." 

— SWEDENBORG. 



XIV. 

A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 

THE disease referred to is ossification or hard- 
ening of the heart. This has always been a wide- 
spread spiritual disorder, and prevails quite as 
extensively in the present day as in days gone by. 
Scripture holds up to view the case of Pharaoh 
as an aggravated type of this disease ; but his 
case, although typical, is by no means exceptional. 
If, however, a correct diagnosis of so pronounced 
a case of moral induration can be obtained, data 
will be furnished for a better understanding of 
the essential nature of this fearful malady. 

There are two distinct forms of this disease. 
The first of these is selfishness. What is indiffer- 
ence to the welfare of others but hard-hearted- 
ness ? In common language a man who resists all 
appeals to his sympathy and benevolence is 
called a hard-hearted man. The upper side of 
his emotional nature resembles the flinty rock. 
The other prominent and prevailing form of this 
disease is moral insensibility. This was the pe- 
culiar aspect which it assumed in the case of 
l 3 



194 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

Pharaoh. That incorrigible monarch continued 
unyielding in the midst of the most signal man- 
ifestations of God's clemency and power. Like 
many gospel-hearers in the present day upon 
whom the most solemn truths make hardly any 
impression, he resisted divine influence as a stone 
resists a shower of rain. 

A state of moral hardness is not the original 
or natural condition of the heart. Man has got 
sadly marred since leaving his maker's hands. 
God made man upright, man has made himself 
what he is ; and glorying in his shame he boasts 
of being self-made. 

In the transitions which have taken place in 
the formation of the solid crust of the earth, we 
have an emblem of the change which the soul of 
man has undergone in passing from its original 
state of purity into a state of sin. Geologists tell 
us that the primary rock structure is crystalline ; 
and that it was once in a state of fusion. The 
coal fields were once immense forests. The lime- 
stone, which is composed of shell-fish and other 
aquatic animals, was once soft and pulpy. And 
so the most hardened criminal was once a pure- 
hearted, innocent boy ; the abandoned profligate 
was once a guileless girl ; the marble-hearted 
man who laughs at religious feeling as a childish 
weakness, once wept over his sins ; the icy, obdu- 
rate heart from which the tender bloom of purity 



A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 19$ 

has long since gone, was once gentle, chaste and 
loving, the home of holy thoughts, the fountain 
of holy, generous deeds. 

Moral insensibility is reached gradually. It is 
a disease whose beginnings stretch far back into 
the past. So imperceptibly does it steal on that 
the victim is seldom apprehensive of danger. 
The subtle malady may manifest no alarming 
symptom, while it is working steadily to a fatal 
crisis. Jesus, on one occasion, when reasoning 
with the Pharisees, is said to have been " grieved 
at the hardening of their hearts." He saw the 
hardening process going on as his word was with- 
stood ; he knew the fatal result to which such a 
condition of heart would lead, and he was 
grieved. With the deepest sorrow he detected in 
the self-satisfied Pharisees the rapid development 
of a disease the existence of which within them- 
selves they little suspected, and would have 
stoutly denied. 

History affords no more impressive example of 
the gradual hardening of the heart than that of 
Nero. That infamous emperor once gave prom- 
ise of noble things. In the beginning of his 
reign he showed marks of the greatest affability 
and humaneness. Nor is there any good reason 
to suspect that these qualities were simulated. 
We have the authority of his teacher Seneca for 
the pleasing incident that when he was under the 



I96 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

necessity of signing his name to a list of male- 
factors who were to be executed, he exclaimed, 
" Would to Heaven I could not write ! " After- 
wards, when the good angel was grieved away, 
no such scruples troubled him. There is the best 
of evidence for the general belief that he set fire 
to the city of Rome, in order that he might 
amuse himself with the wailings and lamenta- 
tions of a distressed people, and by throwing 
the blame upon the Christians find an excuse for 
the fresh gratification of his satanic malignity. 
He even insulted High Heaven by offering 
thanksgiving to the gods, after cruelly murdering 
his wife and mother. This point of hardened 
wickedness was not reached at a single leap. 
Between the innocence of youth and the ripe 
depravity of manhood there lay a long process of 
moral deterioration. When principle snaps sud- 
denly, it will generally be found that the work 
of decay has been going on at the center until 
nothing but the shell of a formal virtue is left. 

By a like gradual descent did the Pharaoh of 
the Exodus — the weak and haughty Meneph- 
thah I. — reach a state of fixed opposition to God. 
Long had the spirit of rebellion been forming 
within him ; and the dealing of God by forcing 
him to decision merely brought that inward con- 
dition to light. His moral hardness was the final 
result of a conflict between his will and the will 



A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 1 97 

of God ; a conflict in which the will of God was 
consciously and obstinately resisted. Every time 
Pharaoh disobeyed the mandate of Heaven in 
refusing to let the Hebrews go, he hardened his 
heart. Numerous and varied were the means 
used to overcome his indomitable pride, and 
bring him to repentance. The sudden death of 
his first-born was a voice of loudest warning. 
Then followed his own sickness when he was 
smitten with the plague of " boils with Mains." 
As a special mark of mercy the Lord lengthened 
out the thread of his life ; saying, " For this very 
purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show 
in thee my power, and that my name might be 
published abroad in all the earth." * God did 
not create him, or call him into being that he 
might make him " a monument of vengeance " ; 
inciting him to evil by rousing him to resistance ; 
then cutting him off from repentance, and hurry- 
ing him on to an inevitable doom. Longing to 
win him to repentance, God prolonged his for- 
feited life, manifesting his power in him, by re- 
vealing to him his alarming spiritual condition. 
Several times when divine power wrought inward 
conviction, Pharaoh exclaimed, " I have sinned 
this time, and I and my people are wicked." 
But although convicted he did not yield. The 

* Rom. viii. 17, 18. 



198 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

confession of his sinfulness was squeezed out by 
the force of trial, and did not flow freely from a 
softened, melted heart. When the pressure was 
withdrawn, the vow which had been made in the 
hour of trouble was forgotten. In spite of the 
clearest evidence of the absolute supremacy of 
the God of Israel, the will was stiffened against 
him. Means were employed, fitted and designed 
to secure the very opposite end to that which 
was produced. The free-will clay with which the 
divine Potter was at work upon his wheel, was 
intended for a vessel of honor, but the vessel was 
marred in his hand, and nothing could be done 
with it, but fashion it into a vessel of dishonor. 

God's part in the hardening of the impenitent 
heart is something more than mere permission. 
He not only allows something to be done ; he 
does something. There is an interplay of the 
human and the divine. Ten times is Pharaoh 
said to have hardened his own heart, and ten 
times is God said to have hardened it. In stifling 
conviction Pharaoh hardened his own heart ; then 
followed judicial hardening, but not total aban- 
donment. What else could God do with a stub- 
born heart than harden it ? The hardening of 
Pharaoh's heart was no strange event, but was in 
perfect harmony with the general order of things 
in the moral world. By the outworking of the 
spiritual laws in constant operation any heart is 



A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 1 99 

hardened when God's message is rejected. 
Upon every heart that continues stout against 
the Most High, the divine curse alights. Just as 
every appeal made by a loving mother to an err- 
ing child has, if resisted, the effect of hardening 
the heart ; so every appeal made by God to the 
human conscience when resisted hardens the 
heart, making it insensible alike to God's mercy 
and to its own danger. 

Man may thus get evil out of good, as on the 
other hand he may get good out of evil. From 
the same soil springs the poisonous and the food- 
bearing plants ; the sun that hardens clay, melts 
wax ; the wind that wafts one ship into harbor, 
dashes another upon the rocks ; the gospel which 
is salvation to one is condemnation to another — 
"the savor of life unto life, or the savor of death 
unto death." 

God hardens whom he will, and he wills to 
harden the persistently impenitent. The con- 
trite heart he wills to soften. Along the unde- 
viating line of spiritual law the divine will is 
carried out in bringing upon the impenitent a 
constant and constantly increasing current of 
penalty ; but alongside of that current of penalty 
flows the mightier current of divine mercy, in 
which it is swallowed up and lost whenever true 
repentance for sin takes place. So that when 
God, claiming absolute sovereign rights, says, 



200 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

" I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," 
be it remembered that in the exercise of his sov- 
ereign rights he wills to have mercy upon the 
penitent. To the question, Unto whom does 
God will to show mercy ? this is the answer : " Let 
the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous 
man his thoughts ; and let him return unto the 
Lord and He will have mercy upon him." "As 
for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not 
fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his 
wickedness." Had the haughty Egyptian king 
bowed in penitence before the scepter of Je- 
hovah, he would not only have obtained forgive- 
ness, but the hand that smote him would have 
been outstretched to bless him ; his example, 
instead of being held up as a beacon of warning, 
would have been handed down as an inspiration ; 
his life, which set in the darkness of dishonor, 
would have been encircled with a halo of unfad- 
ing glory; and through him the name of God 
would have been proclaimed in all the earth — not 
by overwhelming judgment, but by forgiving 
mercy. 

" The heart of a king, in the hand of Jehovah, is 
as rivers of water, he turneth it whithersoever he 
will," * controlling and utilizing it, as the Eastern 
husbandman, by means of artificial irrigation, con- 

* Prov. xxi. i. Suggested rendering. 



A COMMON SPIRITUAL DISEASE. 201 

trols and utilizes the waters of the river, sending 
them at will along the furrows of his fields. Any 
heart which was before a source of misery and 
ruin becomes when put into God's hand a source 
of blessing, spreading verdure and beauty over 
the moral wastes of life through which it flows ; 
but because of the wide-spread influence of roy- 
alty, a king's heart, in God's hand, becomes like a 
majestic river which waters an entire continent. 
Such a heart that of Pharaoh's might have been, 
—but alas ! alas ! 



XV. 
"PAST feeling; 



" That is a hard heart indeed that trembles not at the name of 
a hard heart." — St. Bernard. 

" It is one thing to see your way, another to cut it." — George 
Eliot. 

" God give him grace to groan." 

Shakespeare. 

" In the lowest depths a lower deep 
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide." 

Milton. 



XV. 

" PAST FEELING." * 

THERE can be no sadder sight under the skies 
than a soul that is " past feeling," unless it be a 
soul incapable of feeling; but a soul incapable of 
feeling would be a soul destitute of the essential 
qualities of soul — a thing, and not a being. 
John Stuart Mill defines personality as " the per- 
manent possibility of feeling." Sensibility is a 
quality of soul, as weight and size are qualities of 
matter. To take away the possibility of feeling, 
the soul — the feeling nature — must be destroyed. 
When therefore the pathological figure of bodily 
insensibility to pain or pleasure is taken to de- 
scribe mental or moral states the comparison 
must not be carried too far. Strictly speaking 
the body is incapable of feeling of any kind, and 
is but the medium through which the soul feels. 
When the soul departs from the body, the body 
is not only past feeling, but past the possibility 
of feeling. So long as soul or personality re- 
mains, there remains " the permanent possibility 

* Eph. iv. 19. 



206 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

of feeling." Even when a man in his downward 
progress reaches that woeful state of moral in- 
sensibility described as " past feeling," he does 
not sink out of himself into a state of moral 
nonentity. Although past feeling he is not past 
the possibility of feeling. 

One who is smitten with a great sorrow may 
never smile again. He may sit in perpetual 
gloom, morbidly hugging his grief, refusing to be 
comforted. As a matter of fact and experience 
he is past joy ; but is he past the possibility of 
joy? Is he not deemed guilty for holding him- 
self down to his sorrow, and away from the sun- 
shine that seeks an entrance into his heart ? 

A human spirit may be past redemption, while 
not past the possibility of redemption. That 
any one does not repent is no evidence that he 
cannot repent ; that he will not reform is no 
proof that he cannot reform ; that he lacks the 
will to serve God is no evidence that he lacks the 
power. 

The expression " past feeling " refers exclu- 
sively to present moral condition. Capability of 
feeling is not burned out, or there could be no 
pain or remorse on account of sin, and hence no 
punishment for sin. All pure, heavenly feeling, 
all sensitiveness of moral touch is gone ; all inter- 
est in spiritual things is gone. Conscience once 
tender has become seared as with a hot iron ; the 



" PAST FEELING." 20y 

heart of flesh has become a heart of stone. But 
all feeling is by no means extinguished. The 
lower feelings may be strong and vigorous while 
the higher feelings are withered and dead, just as 
a tree may be alive at the root and rotten at the 
top. The baser feelings may glow as a furnace 
while the nobler feelings are burned to a cinder. 

Moral obduration even in the case of demons 
does not render feeling impossible. " The de- 
mons believe and shudder." Dark thoughts of 
the One God whose authority they have con- 
temned throw their guilty hearts into violent 
commotion as the sea is lashed into fury by the 
storm. They are not past foreboding and re- 
morse, although they may be past all desire to 
return to divine allegiance. An old legend rep- 
resents, on the one hand, the arrival before the 
throne of God of the penitent souls whom his 
pity admits into heaven, and on the other Satan, 
who says, " These souls have offended against 
thee a thousand times ; I, only once." " Hast 
thou ever asked forgiveness ? " replies the Eter- 
nal. 

An inquisitive little boy asked his mother, rt If 
the Devil repented would God forgive him ? " 
The answer of the embarrassed mother is not 
reported. But why should any one hesitate to 
say that God would forgive even the supreme 
rebel of the universe if he repented ? At a meet- 



208 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

ing where all sorts and conditions of sinners "were 
being prayed for an old Scotch woman exclaimed 
with a sudden outburst of holy pity : " The Deil, 
the poor Deil ! naebody prays for the Deil ! " 
Why not pray for him ? Is the cry of sympathy 
to be stilled in the presence of the greatest need ? 
We may not pray that God would forgive the 
Devil as he is, but surely we have every warrant 
to pray that he become other than he is that 
God may forgive him ? But, 0, the pity of it ! 
fallen angels and fallen men may come into a 
state where all desire for restoration has passed 
away. And what can prayers of saints or tears 
of God avail when this state of settled alienation 
has been reached ? 

Into this sad state in which all feeling of 
desire for better things has been left behind, and 
the proper choice of the will has been reversed, 
how many insensibly glide! Moral paralysis 
overtakes them with no sharp and sudden stroke. 
There is a benumbing of the spiritual faculties at 
the extremities, and steadily and stealthily the 
disease creeps inward to the vital parts, until all 
feeling is gone. Of the deadening effect of 
wrong-doing the Poet Burns says : — 

" I waive the quantum of the sin, 

The hazard of concealing; 

But oh, it hardens all within, 

And petrifies the feeling." 



" PAST FEELING." 209 

The degree of ease with which sin is com- 
mitted indicates the degree of moral obduracy 
which has been reached. Those who are past 
feeling " work all uncleanness with greediness." 
They hunger and thirst after sin. It is their 
meat and their drink to do evil. No " compunc- 
tious visitings of nature " trouble them. The 
protest of conscience grows ever feebler. An 
easy victory is won over every uprising thought 
which stands as a good angel between them and 
the commission of wrong. As sinful habit grows 
stronger remorse decreases. 

This explains why so many gospel hearers 
remain unmoved while listening to truths that 
once made them tremble and weep. They have 
become conscience-proof. Their moral natures 
are so thickly padded with indifference that the 
lustiest blows fall unfelt. They are not " gospel 
hardened," but hardened against the Gospel. 
Encased in worldliness, encrusted by formalism, 
they are impervious to all divine appeals. Be- 
neath their thick, tough moral epidermis the 
sharpest argument fails to penetrate. The Gos- 
pel does not get a chance with them. They 
ward it off. They " hold the truth in unright- 
eousness," that is, they detain the truth — keep it 
at arm's length — keep it outside their thoughts — 
that they may continue in unrighteousness. 
Knowing that the truth is a foe to sin, knowing 
14 



210 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

that when the truth enters the heart sin departs, 
they do not allow it to come within the thresh- 
hold of their spiritual habitation. They slam in 
the face of truth the door of their spiritual home, 
afraid least she enter and disturb with her 
accusing voice the false security that reigns 
within. 

Being a wrong moral condition this deadness 
of feeling is preventable. It ought to be 
watched against, fought against. " If ye will 
hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Every- 
thing that blunts the finer feelings of the heart 
and dulls the perceptions of good and evil ought 
to be carefully avoided. And when the discov- 
ery is made that sin's opiates are lulling the soul 
into a deadly stupor, the rudest shocks should be 
applied, if need be, to bring back moral consci- 
ousness. The case may be desperate, but it is 
not hopeless. Strenuous effort will bring back 
feeling when the soul is " past feeling." Within 
the most torpid nature latent powers are slum- 
bering ; somewhere in the most callous heart 
there is a tender spot ; in the strongest suit of 
spiritual mail there is a vulnerable point. Foun- 
tains of the deepest feeling lie in the most de- 
praved hearts, ready to be unsealed by a kind 
word or deed. Plunged in the laver of regenera- 
tion the moral leper who was dry and lifeless as 
parchment comes forth with his flesh restored 



"PAST FEELING. " 211 

" like unto the flesh of a little child." The heart 
that had moved downward " past feeling," re- 
gains 

" A sensibility to sin 
A pain to feel it near." 

There is a sense in which " guilt is a spiritual 
Rubicon." It cuts the soul off from innocence ; 
but it does not cut it off from mercy, or from the 
hope of a better life. The goodness of God has 
power to lead the guiltiest to repentance. As 
the hardest stone may be pulverized, as flint by 
chemical agencies may be reduced to pulp, so 
the mercy of God can change a heart of stone 
into a heart of flesh. During winter it may 
seem as if the sun never would be able to pene- 
trate beneath the surface of the frost-bound 
earth ; but as he draws closer to the earth in 
summer the warmth of his rays goes down to 
the roots of the trees, and thrills them with life. 
Thus does the Gospel penetrate to the very 
center of the soul, exciting the most dormant 
susceptibilities into activity. The very thing 
which the Gospel as a curative power accom- 
plishes for man is to pour new life and energy 
into his diseased and enfeebled moral nature, 
quickening every faculty; awakening the con- 
science, arousing into action the limp and nerve- 
less will, and inspiring the heart with new and 
powerful motives. 



212 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

A ship is cruising in polar seas. Signs are 
given that winter is approaching. Heroic efforts 
are made to reach the open waters ; but such is 
the disabled condition of the ship, and the 
enfeebled condition of the crew, that before the 
weather-beaten craft can thread its way through 
the floating icebergs, the ice surrounds it, and 
holds it in its relentless grip. To those discom- 
fited sailors it might seem as if the cruel grasp of 
the ice would never relax. But summer returns 
apace, and opens a pathway of hope for that ice- 
bound ship. The crew gain " heart of grace ; " 
new life kindles the eye, and stirs the blood ; 
new purposes are formed, lethargy and despond- 
ency are shaken off, and vigorous and successful 
efforts made to escape from the dominion of the 
Ice King. 

Must we, can we, believe that to those who 
have sailed away from God and got fixed in the 
polar sea of sinful habit there comes no summer 
of hope ? that those who have gone into unholy 
courses have nothing to look forward to save an 
unbroken winter of despair? Is the sunshine of 
divine pity not sufficiently warm to thaw before 
the habit-bound soul a path to righteousness and 
peace ? Is the breath of the divine Spirit not 
sufficiently powerful to stimulate to resolute 
action the most dormant nature, and lead it to 
will and to accomplish deliverance from the 



" PAST FEELING." 2 1 3 

dominion of evil ? Is there no hope in God for 
helpless men? There must be ; there is! " The 
great God casteth away no man ; " the Merciful 
Father keeps open before every man a door of 
deliverance, and if there linger within any heart 
the faintest feeling of homesickness, it is always 
possible to push out from the self-imposed exile 
of a sinful life, and by a resolute endeavor reach 
at length the sun-lit lands of purity that now 
seem to lie so far away. 



XVI. 
BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 



" Well doth Agathon say, ' Of this alone is even God deprived 
— the power of making that which is past never to have been.' " 

—Aristotle. 

" Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie 
Which we ascribe to Heaven." 

Shakespeare. 

" Late repentance is seldom true, but true repentance is never 
too late."— Jay. 

" The good he scorned 
Stalked off reluctant like an ill-used ghost 
Not to return ; or if it did, in visits 
Like those of angels, short and far between." 

Blair 

" Could he with reason murmur at his case, 
Himself sole author of his own disgrace ? " 

Cowper. 



XVI. 

BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 

SALVATION is man's birthright ; a birthright 
that comes to him not on the ground of merit, 
but solely on the ground of his connection with 
Christ. His title to the free, full, rich life, 
which is designated in Scripture " eternal life," is 
held in the name of Christ ; for only through 
Christ is such a life attainable. If this heavenly 
birthright, purchased at a cost that can never be 
computed, be lightly esteemed and madly thrown 
away — what then ? Is the loss irreparable ? Can 
the lost paradise never be regained? Is the for- 
saken home forever shut upon the exile ? Does 
the cry of agony which pierces the heavens bring 
no response? Does God stand by unmoved by 
the tears and prayers of his child, having in his 
heart no place for pity and pardon ? Is repent- 
ance ever unavailing ? Is it ever too late to 
mend ? Will the Lord ever scorn to accept the 
remnants of a wasted life? Not so have we 
learned God. 

There is one instance where it is thought that 



2l8 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

repentance came too late ; an instance which 
many consider to be held up as a danger-flag, 
warning of the possibility of reaching a point 
where repentance proves of no avail ; namely, the 
instance where it is said concerning Esau, " Ye 
know that even when he afterward desired to 
inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found 
no place of repentance, though he sought it dili- 
gently with tears." * 

Esau was a rough, willful child of nature ; not 
lacking in brave and generous qualities, yet dom- 
inated by lower desires and impulses. Upon 
the canvas of the Scriptures he stands out under 
the description of " a fornicator and profane per- 
son." A sensual man, evidently, prepared to 
sacrifice to present indulgence the sacred prerog- 
atives which were his birthright as the eldest 
born. To him belonged by right of primogen- 
iture a double portion of the patrimonial inheri- 
tance ; the position of patriarchal head, priest, and 
ruler of the family. All this he bartered for the 
momentary gratification of appetite. "After- 
ward he desired to inherit the blessing." The 
recoil of sated desire had come. Conscience 
was stung with remorse. His dull, sense-bound 
eyes saw clear for once, and he became con- 
vinced of his folly and sin ; or perhaps convinced 

* Heb. xii. 17. 



BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 2 1 9 

more of his folly than of his sin. Loss of his 
inheritance seems to have given him more grief 
than loss of manhood. He saw what a fool he 
had been in allowing himself to be duped by his 
sleek, artful brother. In selling his precious 
birthright for a miserable mess of pottage he had 
made a poor bargain. But what was done in a 
moment of weakness could not afterwards be 
undone. The birthright had been given to 
another, and could not be recalled. " He found 
no place for repentance, although he sought it 
bitterly with tears." His sorrow over his loss 
was deep and pungent. We read in Genesis 
that " he cried with an exceeding great and 
bitter cry, and said, Bless me, even me also, O 
my father." He had found a place for repent- 
ance in himself, but could find no place for 
repentance in his father. All his tears and en- 
treaties could not induce his father to change his 
mind, and transfer the blessing to him, the right- 
ful heir. Although unrighteously supplanted by 
his crafty and perfidious brother, the blessing 
once given could not be revoked ; the dying will 
and testament could not be broken. The answer 
which Esau got to his importunate entreaties 
was one that shut off all hope. " I have blessed 
him, yea, and he shall be blessed." 

Our sympathies are with Esau. We instinct- 
ively pity him, even when we blame him. He 



220 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

had a human father to deal with, one who had 
but a single blessing to dispense, one who was 
immovable, one who acted under mistaken fidel- 
ity to a vow which would have been honored 
more in the breach than in the observance. No 
supplicating child is treated thus by the Heav- 
enly Father. For every one of his prodigal chil- 
dren he has a blessing. His is a heart of love, 
not of iron. No tearful entreaty is needed to 
wring a reluctant favor from his hand. He is 
ever ready to give and to forgive ; ever on the 
giving and forgiving side. To give is his de- 
light ; to forgive his special delight. Within 
his loving breast the faintest cry of the penitent 
finds a responsive echo, and to the sorrowing, 
suppliant child the bartered birthright is in- 
stantly restored. 

With some the case of Judas presents still 
stronger proof than that of Esau in favor of the 
doctrine that repentance may come too late. 
Let us see. Disappointed because of the blight- 
ing of his inherited Messianic hopes, which at 
the first the prophet of Nazareth seemed to give 
promise of fulfilling ; growing in antipathy 
towards the spiritual ideas of Christ's kingdom, 
Judas nursed within his breast a spirit of hate 
that urged him on to the darkest deed the world 
has witnessed. Refusing to accept the noble 
destiny for which he had been endowed, and to 



BAR T BRING THE BIR TUR IGHT. 2 2 I 

which he had been called, the circumstances which 
would have led him to blessedness hurried him 
to ruin. His was too deep and earnest a nature 
to find any sweetness in revenge. When he saw 
what he had done he " rued " his fiendish act, 
and stood before the bar of his own conscience, 
self-judged, and self-condemned. The burning 
fire of remorse was instantly kindled. Stung to 
anguish unbearable he rushed into the Temple, 
and cast down the blood-money at the feet of 
the men whose tool he had been, exclaiming, " I 
have sinned, in that I betrayed innocent blood " ; 
then hastening to make the only atonement to a 
guilty, awakened conscience that now seemed 
possible, he went and hanged himself. Unhappy 
Judas ! Forgive himself he could not. Divine 
forgiveness he dared not ask. He felt that a sin 
so foul even divine mercy could not wash away. 
Perhaps that was the reason why he confessed to 
those iron-hearted creatures and not to God. If 
so, grievously did his despair wrong the Heavenly 
Father, who has said, " Him that cometh unto 
me I will in no wise cast out." Altogether bad 
the betrayer was not. One to whom wrong- 
doing brought such bitter grief must have had in 
him something good. Many sell the Master for 
the world's thirty pieces of silver without experi- 
encing a single pang of agony. And if remorse 
so deep and pungent touches our human pity, 



222 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

who shall dare to say that it failed to touch the 
pity of the Infinite Heart? 

Repentance secures pardon, restores the sinner 
to the sunshine of the Father's smile, but it does 
not wipe out as with a sponge all the natural 
consequences of evil doing. No regrets can 
obliterate the effects of sin. Every broken 
thread in the web of character leaves a flaw. 
Repentance cannot stop the flames when once 
the fire has been kindled. The injury inflicted 
upon others no after sorrow can repair ; the 
squandered fortune the remaining years of life 
may be unable to redeem. In a moment the 
work of a lifetime may be undone. By one act 
of wickedness an unblemished reputation may 
suffer a blot which no future consistent living 
can efface; by one heedless sin all the benefits of 
past obedience may be cut off. So delicate a 
thing is character, so easily is it injured that " a 
good name got by many actions may be lost by 
one," and once lost it is seldom regained. " The 
descent of Avernus," says Virgil, " is easy ; the 
gate of Pluto stands open night and day, but to 
retrace one's steps, and return to the upper air, — 
that is the toil, that is the difficulty." In the 
retrospect of every life there is much that is irre- 
trievable, much that might have been, that never 
more may be. 

" Look carefully lest there be any man that 



BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 22$ 

falleth short of the grace of God/' Such is the 
lesson, such the warning given in view of Esau's 
fall. Consider how his one act of folly and weak- 
ness brought vain regret, and take heed lest thou 
also become the object of thine own scorn "and 
contempt. Watch diligently for the first out- 
croppings of the poisonous root of fleshly desire. 
Beware of the excessive indulgence of appetite, 
for that way ruin lies. Exercise prudent self- 
control, rigorous self-denial. Sell not manhood 
for gold. Sacrifice not the highest interests to 
the lowest. Make character, not pleasure, the 
end of life. Grapple boldly with uprising desire, 
planting the foot of resolute will upon the neck 
of every rebellious passion, " resisting unto blood, 
striving against sin." 

" The hardening of the heart that brings 

Irreverence for the dreams of youth, 
All thoughts of ill, — all evil deeds 

That have their root in thoughts of ill 
Whatever hinders or impedes 

The action of the nobler will, — 
All these must first be trampled down 

Beneath our feet, if we would gain 
In the bright field of fair renown 

The right of eminent domain." 

Before the final triumph of the spirit over the 
flesh there comes in every life the battle of 
Armageddon. Not amid the discordant babble- 
ments of the world, but in the solitudes of the 



224 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

soul is the battle fought out. In the supreme 
struggle between his higher and lower nature 
every man is driven into the wilderness. There 
he enters the contest which is to decide whether 
henceforth he shall be a freeman or a slave. 
Self-mastery is the price of heroic struggle. The 
crown of life, life true and eternal, is the reward 
of him that overcometh. With this crown no 
coward's head is adorned. It must be won before 
it can be worn. 

In the conflict of the Spirit with the flesh evil 
has to be fought not only when it comes as a 
roaring lion, but also when it approaches stealth- 
ily like an impalpable miasma, poisoning the 
soul-blood, and enervating the moral constitu- 
tion. Sometimes there comes over the soul a 
moral inertia which is a harder foe to overcome 
than the most turbulent passion. Decay of will, 
decay of moral virility — the penalty of indulgence 
and inaction — brings on a condition of passive 
despair from which there is no sharp and sudden 
rebound. Habitual surrendering to evil gradu- 
ally weakens the strength of will, until that state 
of extreme impotence is reached when resolu- 
tions are still-born, and the soul, a discrowned 
king, sits amid the ruin of his former greatness, 
issuing empty mandates. 

With constantly increasing indisposition to 
action, with the certainty that every awakened 



BARTERING THE BIRTHRIGHT. 22$ 

impulse if not carried out will leave the soul 
weaker than before ; that the power of self- 
action still remaining if not put into exercise 
will decline yet more and more — how moment- 
ous is the present choice! And besides the 
danger arising from the gradual loss and final 
collapse of spiritual power, there is the additional 
danger of the closing in of the prison walls of 
the earth-life, until no place is left for moral 
reform. A place for repentance, wide and 
roomy, is afforded now and here, which is not 
afforded then and yonder. A place for repent- 
ance is found at the mercy-seat which is not 
found at the judgment-seat. When the present 
day of grace has been sinned away, tears of 
blood will not recover the birthright which has 
been lost. It will then be forever beyond the 
grasp of those who have bartered it away for the 
world's pelf and pleasure. With a painful sense 
of self-inflicted loss, the soul, unable to pluck out 
the memory of the past, will be forced " to sit 
amid deep ashes of the vanished years," haunted 
by the bitter reflection that all might have been 
otherwise. No need will there be for any arbi- 
trary punishment inflicted from without. The 
worm that dieth not, the undying worm of an 
accusing conscience, will gnaw at the vitals of 
the Spirit. The poet sings that " Sorrow's crown 
of sorrow is in remembering happier things," 
'5 



226 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

but is not the acme of sorrow rather remembering 
the glorious possibilities that have been swept 
away into the irrevocable past ? Upon the ear of 
the spirit there can fall no sound more doleful 
than the closing of the golden gates of hope that 
open inward, but do not open outward. There 
are dead hopes for which there is no resurrection. 
There is a repentance which flies with weary- 
wing over wide wastes of water without finding a 
blessed ark of rest. Like a foot-sore and faint- 
ing traveler who has been turned away from an 
inn in which there was no room for him, the 
Soul that has bartered away the sacred birth- 
right of a redeemed manhood, may wander on in 
" the blackness of darkness," finding that doors 
of opportunity which once stood open wide are 
now forever closed. " When once the Master of 
the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, 
and ye begin to stand without and to knock at 
the door saying, ' Lord, open to us ; ' he shall 
answer and say unto you, I know ye not whence 
ye are.'* 



XVII. 

DEATH A LOSS. 



" Many things appear and are irretrievable to us, but there is 
nothing irretrievable with God." — Thos. Erskine. 

" Nothing is too late 
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate." 

Longfellow ( Translation). 

" Heaven delights 
To pardon erring man : sweet mercy seems 
Its darling attribute, which limits justice." 

Dryden. 

" Courage, my friend Battus ; to-morrow will perhaps be more 
favorable ; while there is life there is hope j the dead only are 
without hope." — Theocritus. 

" As long as life its term extends 

Hope's blest dominion never ends : 
For while the lamp holds on to burn 
The greatest sinner may return." 

Scotch Paraphrase. 



XVII. 

DEATH A LOSS. 

The surprises of saving grace are never sur- 
prises of divine paucity, but are always surprises 
of divine plenitude. In every age God has done 
exceeding abundantly above all that any finite 
mind has been able to ask or think. Even in the 
far off days before the flood, the Eternal Spirit^ 
the Spirit-of-the-Ages, was already brooding over 
human hearts. Speaking to the antediluvians 
through Noah, Jehovah said, " My Spirit shall 
not always strive with man, for that he also is 
flesh, and his days shall be an hundred and 
twenty years."* That is, My Spirit, which is 
now striving, shall not always strive with man. 
The moral influence of the Spirit's operations is 
indicated in the word strive, the universal sweep 
of his operations in the generic term man. As a 
father strives with an ungodly son, plying him 
with reasons and motives to induce him to stop 
his mad career of sin and shame, so does the 

* Gen. vi. 3. 



230 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

divine Spirit suasively strive with man. The 
Spirit is no impersonal force or substance, but a 
personal agent, with a heart of infinite love, 
capable of being grieved, and always grieved 
when his tender pleadings are resisted. Although 
often moving outside and above the lower laws 
of which we are cognizant, he always treats man 
in harmony with his nature, and appeals to him 
as an intelligent being. His inner contact is the 
contact of spirit with spirit. His touch is not 
the touch of irresistible power, but of loving per- 
suasion. He enters the soul by every avenue, 
seeking to woo it from sin, and win it to God. 
Not only through the monitions of conscience, 
the common teachings of nature, and the min- 
istries of providence, but through the sacrifice of 
Abel, through the saintly life of Enoch, who in 
these evil days walked with God, through the 
burning words of Noah, " the herald of righteous- 
ness," through the building of the ark, which was 
a token of Noah's faith in the coming judgments, 
divinely threatened, did the Spirit of God strive 
with the antediluvians. Redeeming influences 
beset them behind and before. At every point 
of progress in their downward march to the 
prison of the Universe, they were interrupted by 
pitying, pleading love. In every upward struggle 
the Holy Spirit of God stood ready to help them. 
It was, however, plainly intimated that a time 



DEATH A LOSS. 23 1 

was fast approaching when the holiness-inspiring, 
sin-destroying influences by which they were en- 
circled would be withdrawn ; or rather, a time 
was coming when they would pass beyond the 
reach of these gracious influences. " My Spirit 
shall not always strive with man." Awful threat ! 
the force of which we dare not weaken. Are 
we then to infer that somewhere this side of 
the grave there is a point at which the Spirit 
gives up striving? If so, there must be a time 
when salvation is impossible, for apart from the 
Spirit's help no soul can attain unto salvation. 
This frightful doctrine, which many, in spite of 
the protests of the heart, have felt themselves 
driven to accept, has been voiced in the well- 
known hymn of Dr. J. A. Alexander, which has 
been well styled " The dirge of a lost soul." 

" There is a line by us unseen, 
That crosses every path, 
The hidden boundary between 
God's patience and his wrath. 

Oh ! where is this mysterious bourne, 

By which our path is crossed ; 
Beyond which God himself has sworn 

That he who goes is lost ? 

How far may we go on in sin ? 

How long will God forbear ? 
When does hope end, and where begin 

The confines of despair ? " 



232 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

It is assumed that the boundary line between 
probation and retribution lies on the hither, and 
not on the thither side of the tomb ; that hope 
ends before the close of life ; that the soul enters 
" the confines of despair" before reaching the 
limit of its earthly existence. Is this doctrine of 
doom according to truth ? Is it not " another 
gospel " than the sweet evangel of mercy which 
forms the burden of the Bible, and which pro- 
claims that "to him that is joined to all the 
living there is hope"? Let a man be never so 
bad, is there not hope while there is life, that he 
will amend ? Is there not hope that a change 
may be wrought in him by the Spirit of God ? 
Extraordinary cases do indeed occur in which 
life seems to be protracted beyond the period of 
moral agency ; but these are cases of living death, 
cases in which reason is unseated, or cases in 
which the avenues leading to the soul, from the 
earthward side, are closed up. So long as man 
can think God reasons with him ; so long as he 
retains his moral agency, the words, " Now is the 
day of salvation," can never be of doubtful ap- 
plication. 

A cloud of difficulty is at once lifted from our 
subject when it is noted why the Spirit of God 
would not always strive with man. Jehovah 
said, " My spirit shall not always strive with man 
FOR that he also is flesh, and his days shall be 



DEATH A LOSS. 233 

an hundred and twenty years." The idea is not 
that there was to be a time this side eternity 
when the antediluvians would be given up by the 
Spirit of God, but that being mortal a time 
would come when the hand of death would sever 
their connection with the present source of sav- 
ing help. For while it is true that the opera- 
tions of divine grace have a moral rather than a 
time limit, yet there are certain things limited to 
time, and among these are the present gracious 
influences of the divine Spirit. Those who do 
not yield up their lives to the guiding and 
moulding influences of God's Spirit enter upon 
their future state of existence under great disad- 
vantages : those who have been Spirit-led and 
governed begin the future life under the most 
favorable auspices. What death will bring to 
any one is determined by what life has been. 
There are no broken links in the chain of exist- 
ence. " Death is no juggler to transmute quali- 
ties by a touch." Death is merely an incident, a 
transition, a change of place, not a change of 
self-hood. Death makes no gap in any life. It 
is the birth-pang into a higher or lower state of 
existence. All the experiences of the present 
are carried forward into the future ; the harvest 
of character here ripened is there gathered in, 
and stored up. Nothing is lost. As life is 
begun here, it is continued there. " To be con- 



234 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

tinued in the next," is written at the close of the 
last chapter of every human life. When life has 
been an ascent death will be an ascent ; when 
life has been a descent death will be a descent ; 
when it has been gain to live it will be gain to 
die ; when life has been a loss, death must be a 
loss. Those who have lived in the spirit, and 
have by a divine alchemy brought heavenly gain 
out of earthly loss, suffer no loss by death, but 
continue to keep " on the gain," advancing from 
glory to glory ; but those who have lived in the 
flesh, those whose apparent gains have brought 
them real loss, those who in Order to gain the 
world have thrown away manhood, divine com- 
munion, heavenly hope, holy character — in a 
word sou/, end the present life and begin the 
future life in a state of spiritual bankruptcy and 
ruin. Not the least item in their loss is the loss 
of spiritual privilege. It is a law of the spiritual 
kingdom that non-use or abuse of privilege leads 
to its withdrawal, and that resistance of remedial 
influence is followed by dispossession. " From 
him that hath not shall be taken away that which 
he hath." And while we must admit the con- 
tinued possibility of moral change so long as the 
moral nature of man remains intact, yet by the 
abuse of privilege or power man may put himself 
in conditions unfavorable to moral change, condi- 
tions which leave a very slender probability of 



DEATH A LOSS. 235 

any upward moral movement ever taking place. 
At the touch of death opportunities vanish 
which never return ; and even if new opportuni- 
ties are afterwards given, they recur in a con- 
stantly diminishing measure. The Roman king, 
who refused to purchase the Sibylline leaves after 
the first and second offers, paid at last for the 
remaining three the price asked for the original 
nine ; three of the precious leaves having been 
destroyed upon each refusal. And so by every 
refusal of divine mercy something is lost ; by 
continued refusal all is lost. The slighted favor 
of to-day is never carried into to-morrow. God 
still warns those who are repulsing his efforts for 
their redemption, saying unto them, " My spirit 
shall not always strive with man." 

The text under consideration has an added 
value as supplying a side light by which we are 
helped to an understanding of the obscure text 
in the first epistle of St. Peter, where Christ is 
represented as preaching " in the spirit " (i. e. in 
his own essential, spiritual nature, in which he 
was quickened from the dead,) " to spirits in 
prison." * Whether the preaching of Christ took 
place during his pre-incarnate, or during his post- 
incarnate state ; whether it was addressed to men 
on earth who are now spirits in prison, or to spir- 

* 1 Peter iii. 18-21. 



2$6 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

its in prison who were once men on earth, the 
point to be noted in the present connection is, 
that in the early morning hour of history before 
the Flood, an efflux of spiritual power was en- 
joyed. The first droppings of the heavenly rain, 
which at Pentecost was outpoured in a copious 
shower, then fell to earth ; the first link of the 
great chain of divine Spirit-force by which the 
ages are bound together in one continuous dis- 
pensation of redemption, then came into view. 
God was at work on man. With the spirits in 
prison, when as yet they were men on earth, the 
Spirit of God strove, through a long period of 
deferred judgment. A wondrous display of 
mercy preceded the fearful doom by which they 
were finally overtaken. 

From the Old Testament narrative some impor- 
tant facts may be gathered relating to the world- 
life of the imprisoned spirits to whom Christ 
preached. The picture given of their moral 
condition is a dark one. In words at once 
graphic and suggestive we are told that " God 
saw that the wickedness of man was great in 
the earth, and that every imagination of the 
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." 
The disease was both widespread and deep ; the 
fountain of life was poisoned, the heart was 
corrupt to the very core, moral degeneration was 
well nigh universal. Calls to repentance were 



DEATH A LOSS. 237 

unheeded, the day of gracious opportunity was 
sinned away. " While the ark was preparing " 
the long-suffering of God waited upon that evil 
generation. The hundred and twenty years of 
respite which had been granted to see if they 
would repent and turn to God, at length expired. 
Under a Messianic ministry they continued diso- 
bedient, unpersuadable. " They were eating and 
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until 
the day that Noah entered into the ark, and 
knew not until the flood came and took them 
all away,"— away from the spiritual privileges 
which they had so long neglected, — away from 
the close and tender touch of the loving Spirit 
whose sweet influences they had so long rejected. 
Their end was destruction because they minded 
earthly things, and slighted the things of the 
Spirit. 

All questions of historic value aside, the 
Noachic deluge forms a striking object-lesson, 
the ethical import of which lies upon the surface. 
" It is," as Oehler has so well put it, " the first 
judgment in the world executed by the holy God, 
who will no longer permit his Spirit to be pro- 
faned by man's sin." The Puritan Howe de- 
scribes Jehovah as thus addressing the unhappy 
souls who had so stoutly withstood the strivings 
of his Spirit : " Because thou hast so great a 
mind to gain the day, and to deliver thyself from 



238 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

under the power of my grace, get that unhappy 
victory, and perish by it." Nay, Puritan Father! 
rather would Jehovah say : " Keep yourselves 
under the power of my grace : and let my Spirit 
win the victory over your obstinate hearts, that 
ye perish not." 

Out of the darkness of judgment, divine solici- 
tude shines forth with ever increasing brightness, 
along the whole line of that special movement of 
God manward, of which the Bible is the record. 
Other religions represent man as seeking God ; 
the religion of the Bible alone represents God as 
seeking man. So long as the smallest ember of 
spiritual power lies smoldering beneath the ashes 
of a ruined life, there is no abatement of the 
efforts of God to save the lost. When his efforts 
fail, he mourns with a sorrow of heart which can- 
not be measured. The difference it makes to 
him whether the lost remain lost, or are at last 
reclaimed, none may ever know. Into his joy, 
when the end of his long and loving search has 
been attained, earth may refuse to enter; but as 
he returns from the wilderness leading the wan- 
derer home, Heaven's bells peal their loudest, 

" And the angels echo around the throne, 
Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own." 



XVIII. 

THE FINALLY OF THE PRESENT. 



"The curtains of yesterday drop down; the curtains of to- 
morrow roll up; but yesterday and to-morrow both are." — 
Carlyle. 

" Oh, but to tarry once more 

At the point where two roads met, 
And choose as we chose not then, — 
Made wise by a life's regret ! '* 

Anonymous. 

" Urge them while their souls 
Are capable of this ambition ; 
Lest, zeal now melted by the windy breath 
Of soft petitions, pity and remorse 
Cool and congeal again to what it was." 

Shakespeare. 



XVIII. 

THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 

In cautious, measured words Bishop Butler 
asserts that " that which makes the question con- 
cerning the future life of so great importance to 
us, is our capacity of happiness or misery ; and 
that which makes the consideration of it to be of 
so great importance to us is the supposition of 
our happiness hereafter depending upon our 
actions here." * The presence in man of the 
moral instinct or conviction that the present is 
the seed-time of which eternity is the harvest, 
that upon the life that now is hinges the life that 
is to come, none will deny. And unquestionably 
the general tenor of Scripture teaching produces 
upon the popular mind the impression that Sal- 
vation is the paramount affair of this world ; that 
in some special sense the quality of moral finality 
attaches to the present state of existence. " The 
obvious practical lesson and purpose of Scripture 
upon this question," says Dr. Chalmers, " is to cut 

* Analogy of Religion, Chap. II. 
16 



242 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

off every pretext of postponing the care of eter- 
nity from this world, and to press home upon 
every unsophisticated reader of his Bible the 
dread alternative of Now, or Never." 

In the much-quoted text, " Behold, now is the 
accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salva- 
tion " * the doctrine of the finality of the present 
is indeed taught, but it is taught inferentially, 
and not, as might at first be supposed, by direct 
and positive statement. The immediate design 
of this text is to present a motive to Christian 
activity. In the preceding verse the Apostle 
says, " We then, as workers together with Him, 
beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of 
God in vain." " We pray you that you frustrate 
not the purpose for which the forgiving grace of 
God has been bestowed; but that you constantly 
strive to take hold of that for which God has 
taken hold of you." What is the purpose for 
which divine grace is given ? Is it not this, — 
that it may be conveyed to others ? All per- 
sonal experiences of inward delight are means 
rather than ends. What is taken in should be 
given out; what has been inpoured should be 
outpoured. Those that come unto Christ and 
drink should become fountains of living water ; 
the inflow of living water into their hearts is to 

* 2 Cor. vi. 2, 



THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT 243 

be followed by an outflow into other hearts. 
Between the ocean fullness of God and the 
world's emptiness the believing soul forms a con- 
necting pipe. Salvation comes to the world from 
God, but it comes from God through his people. 
It is the divine purpose and plan that " by the 
church might be made known the manifold wis- 
dom of God." 

While urging those who had received the 
grace of God not to shut it up in their own 
bosom but to let it stream out upon others, the 
Apostle enforces his exhortation with the argu- 
ment, " Now is the accepted time ; now is the 
day of salvation." The present is a favorable 
time, a time of grace, a time of acceptance. 
There is no need to "wait in doubt, restraining 
prayer. God's good time, God's set time, is now. 
All the motives that could lead him to answer 
prayer for others to-morrow are equally power- 
ful to-day. Unto his Anointed he said of old, 
"At an acceptable time I hearkened unto thee;" 
to-day he says unto all his praying people, " Be- 
hold, now is the acceptable time." 

Another link is added to the chain of argu- 
ment ; Now, this very day, is the day of salvation, 
the day in which God is putting forth his utter- 
most of saving power ; therefore let those who 
have received his grace stir up their strength, and 
work together with him in the redemption of 



244 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

humanity. God is ready to bestow redeeming 
power upon men, and he seeks to use his people 
in its distribution. The reason why the water of 
life often fails to reach thirsty, perishing souls, is 
because the appointed channels of communica- 
tion are choked up. The work of God lingers 
because the instruments upon which he depends 
are not prepared for use. God is urgent, but his 
people are supine ; God is in haste, but his peo- 
ple lag. Every loiterer he rebukes ; every will- 
ing-footed messenger he sends forth crowned with 
blessing, upon errands of love ; power for service 
he abundantly bestows ; work done he accepts 
and rewards ; divine might he yokes with human 
weakness ; divine gains he puts to the credit .of 
the human agent. In this pledged co-operation 
of the divine with the human, in this open assur- 
rance of being heard and helped, is found one of 
the strongest motives to instant and hearty con- 
secration to the work of saving men. That now 
is the day of the Lord's power, should constrain 
his people to be free-will offerings, and render 
to him willing-handed, willing-hearted service. 
That " now is the day of salvation " should incite 
those with whom the Lord is working, to put 
forth their strongest efforts to push towards ful- 
fillment the purpose of redemption upon which 
the heart of God is set. Belief in the present 
possibility of salvation furnishes the needed ful- 



THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 24$ 

crum upon which to rest the lever of Christian 
effort. The age now running swiftly to its close 
affords possibilities of fruitful Christian service 
that no preceding age ever offered. It is now 
" the fullness of the times." The river of salva- 
tion is at full flood. Never could life be made 
to tell for the Kingdom of God so much as now. 
Never was the responsibility of living so great as 
now. 

As the initial sphere of spiritual development, 
the present life can hardly be sufficiently mag- 
nified. Not what it fits us for, but what it is 
constitutes its highest element of worth. Life 
does not simply afford a chance of being saved ; 
it is one continuous opportunity, one perpetual 
now. In every life, " Now is the favorably 
accepted time ; Now is the day of Salvation." 
During the continuance of the present time- 
period a season of amnesty is enjoyed ; doors of 
special privilege stand open ; favors are offered 
which are only for to-day; golden opportunities 
are available which when gone out of life will 
never return ; alluring possibilities present them- 
selves which pass away for ever at the setting of 
life's sun. Not the dread of the future, but the 
glorious opportunity of the present is made the 
chief incentive to spiritual activity. Repent, not 
because the Kingdom of Hell is at hand, but 
because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 



246 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

Repent — not that you may escape the doom of 
perdition, but that you may enter into the king- 
dom, — the kingdom of righteousness and peace, 
and joy in the Holy Ghost, — the kingdom of 
royal, Christlike souls. And let repentance be 
speedy, because only for a limited time is the 
present respite granted, only for a limited time 
are the present immunities given — only until the 
close of life's brief day are the present opportu- 
nities held out. The Intercessor of man does 
not pray that the doom pronounced over the 
barren tree may not descend, but that it be 
delayed. " Let it alone this year also, till I shall 
dig about it and dung it." This final effort of 
divine long-suffering love to redeem life from 
spiritual barrenness fills up the decisive period of 
trial to which the whole future is linked. " If it 
bear fruit thenceforth, well ; but if not thou shalt 
cut it down." 

To the question, " Wherefore do the wicked 
live?" this then is the answer; "They live that 
they may have time to repent, time to reform, 
time to ripen." If the mercy now offered is 
missed, it may never be won tack. Says St. 
Ambrose, " God hath promised pardon to the 
penitent, but he has not promised to-morrow to 
the negligent. While you have time you may 
repent ; but if you delay, when you would repent 
you may not have time." " Seek ye the Lord 



THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT 247 

while he may be found ; call ye upon him while 
he is near." " Walk while ye have the light lest 
darkness come upon you." " If thou hadst 
known, in this day, even thou, the things which 
belong unto peace ! But now they are hid from 
thine eyes." 

Unspeakably precious is the present as the day 
of salvation — the day of preeminent privilege 
and possibility. In it — as has been well said by 
John Pulsford — " an appointed time is given for 
electing the principles of our life, and for getting 
them rooted and settled in us, as the foundation 
on which to build our eternal character." In the 
choices and actions of each passing hour eternal 
issues are wrapped up. The soul is now receiv- 
ing an upward start in the path to eternal life, or 
a downward start in the path to eternal death. 
By slow, yet constant accretions a character is 
being formed which contains for its vital center 
" a self-hood without God, or a self-hood whose 
springs are in God." What the future will be, is 
being determined by the principles and habits 
which shape and control the present. As to-day 
is the harvest of all the yesterdays, the future is 
the harvest of all the present. Deep in every 
breast is planted the conviction that life is set in 
eternal relations. " God hath set eternity in the 
heart of man," * and thoughts of what is beyond 

* Ecc. iii. 11. 



248 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

cast their lights and shadows upon every part of 
the landscape of his life. Man is touched by the 
future. He lives in the shadow of the judg- 
ment-seat. Every atom of his conduct here is 
felt to have a practical bearing upon the here- 
after. Earnests of the coming inheritance are 
already in his hand ; within his conscience the 
fires of retribution are already kindled. Where 
holiness is there is heaven ; where sin is there is 
hell. 

Between the present and the future no hard- 
and-fast line can be drawn. They form distinct 
but united realms of the one King, — the gentle 
Lord of love who died upon the cross for man's 
offences. Death, the finale of life, marks the 
end of the one realm and the beginning of the 
other. In what respects the two realms are 
alike, and in what respects they differ ; whether 
death is merely the end of the present term of 
moral education and trial, or whether it is the 
point at which the moral education and trial of 
every man cease forever, are questions upon 
which dogmatism is forbidden by the silence of 
Scripture. Of this only are we certain : the pro- 
bation of man will stop when his moral educa- 
tion stops, and not before. When God ceases to 
sow he will cease to look for a harvest. And he 
will cease to sow only when he finds that the 
soil upon which his seed is thrown has become 



THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 249 

petrified into unreceptive rock. In every in- 
stance the ceasing of divine saving effort is deter- 
mined by the obduracy of the sinner. So that 
there is an important sense in which the day of 
salvation is the day of human persuadability, and 
the day of doom the day of human unpersuada- 
bility. In the final judgment the present epoch 
of redemption comes to an end ; but it is a mis- 
take to make the final judgment the crisis of des- 
tiny. The real crisis of destiny is reached when 
a soul has judged himself unworthy of eternal 
life, and God has confirmed his judgment. 

Is the judgment passed by man upon himself, 
and confirmed by God, reversible ? Is the final 
judgment of time, absolutely the final judgment ; 
or is judgment a continuous process? Does pro- 
bation end at death for all, or is it continued 
into the future world for any? Does moral 
choice go on forever betwixt the darkness and 
the light ; or, does it take place in every life, 
once for all ? These questions lead us among the 
mysteries, the full knowledge of which has not 
been given to mortal. Where knowledge fails 
we guess and hope. But, whatever room for un- 
certainty may be thought to exist as to whether 
then is the day of salvation, that now is the day 
of salvation admits of no uncertainty whatsoever. 
Short of the uttermost of human need the re- 
demptive resources of the present never fail. 



250 UNTO THE UTTERMOST 

While life lasts man may reverse his self-pro- 
nounced sentence of condemnation, and be saved 
from his own undoing. Here, at least, faith and 
reason can firmly plant their feet. For think 
you that God would keep on the footstool of 
mercy, a rebel from whom his mercy was denied ? 
Think you that he would ply with motives to 
repentance a heart that had lost the power to 
turn? Think you that he would prune and 
nourish a tree that was not merely barren but 
dead? Think you that he would keep under the 
ripening sun of his goodness a soul for whom 
nothing but the unquenchable fire was possible ? 
Perish the thought ! 

Affirmations respecting the present life as a 
day of salvation leave every question touching 
the days that are yet to come, entirely open. It 
is the merest fragment of God's redemptive pur- 
pose that the Bible has revealed. What we see 
is only the swelling bud ; the ripe fruit will come 
later on. Age will follow age, dispensation 
stretch on beyond dispensation until the harvest 
of all ages has been reaped, and the purpose of 
God completed. Then, but not till then can the 
success of the work of redemption be known. 

Upon the dark background of awe and mystery 
which covers the future, one star shines brightly 
out ; we know that God is love, and that nothing 
that love can do to conquer sin, or to restore the 



THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 2$ I 

sinner, will be left undone. Surprises may await 
us in the future world greater than any that have 
gladdened us on earth. The ocean of Infinite 
Mercy which from the beginning of time has 
been emptying itself into this world has not run 
dry. Christ has not loved his last ; Calvary has 
not exhausted the saving power of the Divine 
Redeemer. 

" There is grace enough for thousands 
Of new worlds as bright as this.' ' 

And while Heaven's granaries are full to 
bursting will a single soul anywhere be left to 
starve ? If we know not the future we know 
God, and in his hands we can well afford to leave 
all things, content to remain in ignorance con- 
cerning everything he has been pleased to hide 
from us ; but confident that the perfect explana- 
tion which awaits us will put to shame every 
doubt with respect to his eternal goodness with 
which our faith on earth was shadowed. 

The Bible itself professes to give only a par- 
tial unveiling of the future. It conceals much 
more than it reveals. It often places upon its 
utterances a wonderful restraint. When man 
with palpitating heart awaits an answer, the oracle 
is often dumb. As much as is necessary for 
practical purposes is given, and no more. The 
Bible is " a lamp unto the feet, and a light unto 



252 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

the path," not a light that dazzles and blinds, 
but a twinkling foot-lamp that makes plain to the 
traveler the path of life and duty. Wide spaces 
are not illumined by it, but there is light suffi- 
cient to give direction to conduct in this work-a- 
day world. Those who follow it are made wise 
unto salvation, and are led at length into the 
glorious light of a new-born day, in which the 
dark clouds of earth melt into eternal sunshine ; 
those who despise its guiding light lose their 
way, and wander aimlessly on, stumbling upon 
the dark^mountains. 

Every declaration to the effect that the present 
is a time of favor implies that in the experience 
of those who have not improved the opportunities 
of the present there will be a change for the 
worse. Delusive is the dream of the greater 
things which the future will do. No advantage 
can be offered in the future which is not held out 
in the present. Never can the Heavenly Father 
be more willing to save, never can Christ be 
more able to save than at the present moment. 
In the outgoing of redemptive effort, high-water- 
mark has been touched. The Omega of redemp- 
tion has been uttered ; atonement has been 
completed; the Holy Spirit has been poured out 
upon all flesh, in a flood of saving power. Noth- 
ing has been kept back. Heaven's treasury 
contains no more precious el than that which 



THE FINALITY OF THE PRESENT. 253 

has been given as the ransom-price of this lost 
world of ours. Divine love and power may keep 
on repeating themselves, but they can go further. 
A point of spiritual finality has been reached 
which makes the present " the day of Salvation," 
in a sense that no other day ever was. The 
utmost anticipation of the largest hope is that 
something of the grace of to-day may flow into 
the future. Nothing better than the Christ or 
Holy Spirit of the present is ever dreamed of. 
No resources can be available in the future sur- 
passing those of the present. No firmer ground 
upon which to build the house not made with 
hands — the temple of a holy character — can be 
furnished by the future than that which the pres- 
ent affords. Contrariwise, all the surplus of 
advantage is on the side of the present. Can 
continued estrangement from God prepare for 
spiritual change? Can sinful habits be more 
easily uprooted the deeper they are fixed in the 
soil of a depraved heart ? Can graduation in 
the school of Satan prepare for entrance into 
the school of Christ ? Can the treasures of the 
present be flung away without incurring eternal 
loss ? Can duty be delayed without danger ? 
What is done in the way of moral reform, per- 
sonal or general, must be done quickly. There is 
no time to lose. Day is vanishing ; Night is ap- 
proaching. Character is becoming stereotyped. 



254 UNTO THE UTTERMOST. 

" There is an infinite voice in the sin and suffer- 
ing of earth's millions which makes every idle 
moment guilt, and seems to cry out, — If you do 
not bestir yourself for love's sake now, it will 
soon be too late." Before the last sand runs 
through time's hour-glass; before the candle of 
hope flickers in its socket and expires; before 
the last page in life's book is reached, and the lids 
are closed, the work which the Father has given 
each one to do, must needs be accomplished. 
How important then, ere the sun goes down, to 
"buy up the opportunity ! " What diversities of 
holy service the future life may bring, we know 
not ; but it is certain that earth is the sphere, 
and death the limit of many distinctive forms of 
labor, which belong exclusively to the present 
epoch of redemption. Laborers are called into 
the vineyard up to the eleventh hour, but not 
after. When the Clock of Time points to the 
twelfth hour, the present day of gracious oppor- 
tunity is over, the night has come when no man 
can work ; and all neglected or unfinished tasks 
remain undone for ever. 



THE END. 



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out of his own brain, the advance from 
theory to practice, the working out of 
the pathway for the higher education 
of women where none existed, that 
wise conservatism and intelligent pro- 
gress by which these results were 



reached, and the entire consecration 
of his life to these ends— which is Dr. 
Raymond's chief monument." — New 
York Times. 

'• A book, the charm of which it is 
not easy to express." — Chicago Ad- 
vance. 



Henry C. McCook, D.D. 

Tenants of an Old Farm: Leaves from the Note- 
Book of a Naturalist. By the Vice-Pres. Acad. Nat. Sciences, 
Philadelphia. Profusely Illustrated. 460 pages. Well indexed. 
Decorated cloth. New popular edition in i2mo. Price, $1.50. 
Excursions and investigations into the habits of moths, bees, hor- 
nets, ants, spiders, crickets, cidadas, and many varieties of insects. 

" I have much pleasure in bearing 
testimony to the fidelity and skill which 
Dr. McCook has devoted to the study 
of these interesting atoms: and those 
who read his work may safely depend 
on the accuracy of what he says." — 
From Sir John Lubbock's Pre/ace to 
the English Edition. 

Jacob Harris Patton, Ph.D. 

Concise History of the American People. Illus- 
trated with Portraits Charts. Maps, etc. Marginal Dates, Census 
Tables, Statistical References, and full Indexes. 2 vols., 8vo, $5. 
"We take great pleasure in com- I " Without doubt the best* short his, 

mending it for all the purposes of a | tory of the United States that has ever 

complete and accurate history."— New I been published.'"— Teacher's Institute, 

York Observer. | N. Y. 

The Democratic Party: Its Political History and 

Influence i6mo 350 pp. Cloth $1.00. 

" An instructive outline review of the whole political history of the United 
States." — New York Times. 



" The scientific accuracy, the good 
illustrations and simple descriptions 
make it a valuable book for amateurs 
and a good book of reference for ad- 
vanced students."— Springfield Repub- 
lican. 

" Would make a charming present to 
one of scientific tastes."— Advance. 



FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT. 



Robert R. Raymond. 
Shakespeare for the Young Folk, Containing " A 

Midsummer Night's Dream," " As You Like It," "Julius Caesar." 
8vo. Richly Illustrated. Old Gold Cloth, decorated, $2.50. 



" The many passages not necessary 
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retained, the whole woven into a con- 
nected form, and the original text, so 
far as it is used, is carefully edited, 
with explanatory foot-notes.'"— Boston 
Traveller. 



" For many years he has made a 
practical study of presenting Shake- 
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timation in which we hold him as a 
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Boston Home Journal. 

'• The work is every way well done." 
— Wm. J. Rolfe, Shakespeare Eaitor 
of the Literary World, Boston. 



William S. Searle, M.D. 
A New Form of Nervous Disease. With an Essay 

on Erythroxylon Coca. 8vo. Cloth, 50 cents. 

William Osborne Stoddard. 

Abraham Lincoln. The True Story of a Great Life. 
By one of President Lincoln's Private Secretaries. 8vo. Illus- 
trated. Cloth. $2.25. 

" Written in terse, clear-cut English, 
and intensely readable from beginning 
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approaches closely to the ideal biog- 
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by the efforts of any subsequent 



author.'"- The Literary World. Boston. 
A graphic and entertaining biogra- 
phy, as rich in incident as any romance, 
and sparkling with wise wit and racy 
anecdote." — Harper's Monthly. 



Albion W. Tourgee. 

An Appeal to Caesar. Advocating National Aid to 
Education throughout the States, in proportion to illiteracy and to 
the local efforts to remedy it. Diagrams and Tables. Cloth, $1.25. 

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" Offers a series of vistas in different 
directions through the serried array of 
census figures that are simply astound- 
ing, while his keen, vigorous treatment 
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tion."— Publisher's Weekly, N. Y. 



Ben C. Truman. 

The Field of Honor. A History of Duelling and 
Famous Duels. The Judicial Duel ; The Private Duel through- 
out the Civilized World ; Descriptions of all the Noted Fatal 
Duels that have taken place in Europe and America. i2mo. 
Cloth, $2.00. 

"Full of interest to the student, the reader. . . . One of those special- 
soldier, the professional analyzer of ties that necessarily find place in every 
passion and motive, and to that curious library. ' ' — Magazine o/h merican His- 
sed, omnivorous creature, the general tory, N. Y. 



MISCELLANEOUS PUBLIC A TIONS. 



John C. Van Dyke. 



Principles of Art. Part I. — Art in History, its 
causes, nature, development, and different stages of progression. 
Part II. — Art in Theory, its aims, motives, and manner of 
expression. i2mo. Vellum Cloth, $1.50. 



" Thickly set with points of interest, 
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"As a rapid, bright series of historical 
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Theodore S. Van Dyke. 

Southern California : Its Valleys, Hills, and 
Streams ; Its Animals, Birds, and Fishes ; Its Gardens, Farms, 
and Climate. i2mo. Extra Cloth, beveled, $1.50. 



" The result of twelve years' experi- 
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'*A keen and observant naturalist." 
— London (Eng.) Morning Post. 



"Without question the best book 
which has been written on the South- 
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The Still Hunter. A Practical Treatise on Deer- 
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" Altogether the best and most com- 



44 The best, the very best work on 
deer hunting.— Spirit of the Times. 

n. y. 



plete American book we have yet seen 
on any branch of field sports. '—New 
York Evening Post . 

The Rifle, Rod, and Gun in California. A Sport- 
ing Romance. i2mo. Extra Cloth, beveled, $1.50. 

44 Crisp and readable throughout, ern California game, afoot, afloat or 
and, at the same time, gives a full and on the wing." — San Francisco Alta 
truthful technical account of our South- California. 

Tullio di Suzzara Verdi, M.D. 

Maternity : A Popular Treatise. Eighth Edition. 
i2mo. Cloth, $2 00. 

Treating of the needs, dangers, and alleviations of the duties of 
maternity, and giving detailed instructions for the care and medical 
treatment of infants and children. 



44 A carefully written and very com- 
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years been well known in Washington 



as an unusually able and successful 
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guide."— A 7 '. Y. Times. 



The Infant Philosopher : Stray Leaves from a 

Baby's Journal. Parchment Paper, 30 cts. ; Vellum Cloth, 50 cts # 

The Inde- 



"Amusing as this booklet is, its object 
is not frivolous nor even literary ; but 
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of the child's needs from a child's 
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long experience of the most observing 
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Pendent. N Y. 

'" Every young mother should be fur- 
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chure, which is as much a book of 
practical sense as it is aj'eu d ''esprit.' 1 '' — 
Even ing Bulletin, Philadelphia . 



FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT. 



Dr. William Wagner. 
Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages. Adapted 

from the German. 500 pp 

Cloth, gilt edges, $2.00. 
11 Presenting familiarly the stirring 
legends of the Amelungs, the Dietrichs, 
the Niebelungenlied, Charlemagne and 
his knights, King Arthur and the Holy 
Grail (Lohengrin. Parsifal. Tannhau- 
ser, etc.), Tristan and Isolde, and all 
the rich, romantic realm from which 
Richard Wagner drew his potent in- 
spiration."— Literary World, Boston. 



8vo. Numerous spirited Illustrations. 



" Should supply the requirement of 
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sal music-dramas ; and whether for the 
delight of the young, or the pleasure 
of the elders, it comes at a timely 
juncture."— New York Star. 



Maj 



jor George 



E. Williams. 



Bullet and Shell. War as the Soldier saw it : 
Camp, March, and Picket ; Battlefield and Bivouac ; Prison and 
Hospital. Illustrated by Edwin Forbes. 1 vol., large 8vo. 
Illustrated. New popular edition, $2.00. 



" Very correct history." — U. S. 
Grant. 

" I have no hesitation in recommend- 
ing your interesting volume."— W. T. 
Sherman. 

" I have read the book, and enjoyed 
it extremely, as giving such an admir- 



able picture of the interior of army 
life "—Geo. B. McClellan. 

"We know of no more stirring and 
soul-inspiring book. It is a story to 
delight the old soldier's heart." — New 
York Commercial Advertiser. 



James Grant Wilson. 



Bryant and His Friends. Some Reminiscences of 
the Knickerbocker Writers. Bryant. Paulding. Irving. Dana, 
Cooper Halleck, and Drake ; together with Poe, N. P. Willis, 
Bayard Taylor, and others. Illustrated with Steel Portraits and 
Fac-Simile MSS. i2mo. Cloth beveled, gilt top, §2 00. 



"I have read it with interest and 
pleasure."— George William Curtis. 

•' A standard volume of literary his- 
tory. 11 — Roston Evening- Traveller. 

'• Accept my thanks, as a New York 
author, for the work you have accom- 
plished.' 1 — Edmund C Stedman. 



" No man living is probably so well 
fitted as the author of this volume to 
sketch the group of Knickerbocker 
writers "—New York Tribune. 

" A delightful addition to the stores 
of literary and personal history."— Chi' 
cago Inter-Ocean. 



IRemainfcet ot Xarge paper JEMtion 

WHICH WAS STRICTLY LIMITED TO 195 NUMBERED COPIES. 

Illustrated with 48 rare Steel Portrait Plates. 4 views of Poets' 
Homes (Steel) and 17 pages of Manuscript facsimile. 

Cloth, gilt top, uncut edges. $15.00. In Sheets, for adding 
illustrative plates, at the same price. Full Mor., gilt, $25. 



%* Send for our Selected Catalogue of choice American books. 
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, 

30 Lafayette Place, New York. 



Cboice Works of fiction, 

PUBLISHED BY 

FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, 

30 Lafayette Place, New York. 



AnonymOUS. A Palace-Prison; or, the Past and the Pres- 
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Henry Ward Beecher. Norwood: A Tale of Village 
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Alexander Bida. Aucassin and Nicolette : The Lovers 
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Helen Campbell. The Problem of the Poor. Stories 
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ChaS. M. Clay. The Modern Hagar. Southern View of 
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Alice C. Hall. Miss Leighton's Perplexities. A Love 
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Wm. J. Harsha. Ploughed Under: The Story of an In- 
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Nathan C. KounS. Dorcas : A Tale of the Catacombs. 

Illustrated. $1 25. 

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Once a Man. Illustrated. $1.50. 

Mrs. A. G. Paddock. The Fate of Madame La Tour. 

Mormonism. $1.00. 

Blanche Roosevelt, stage-struck : or, she would be 

an Opera Singer. $1.50. 
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Wm. A. Wilkins. The Cleverdale Mystery: The Po- 
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